Point Of View
by JustAsterous
Summary: Wally dies unexpectedly, but Dick swears that he still sees him around. Everyone else is convinced that he's crazy with grief and has started seeing things, but Wally doesn't hold the same opinion. That just leaves Dick, torn between trusting the experts or listening to the voice of a possible illusion. Season 1. Friendship.
1. Chapter 1

**_Hey, guys! Wow, I can't believe I'm finally putting this up._**

 ** _So, if you hadn't guessed, this is the fanfiction that I've spent the spring slaving over. I had planned to put it up this summer, but I went to Armenia and I still haven't actually finished it. I have the last chapter to put together, but I'm fairly certain that I'll get it done before it's time to post. Therefore, yes, I have already written just about this entire fanfiction, and I've done that so to be certain that this will never be on hiatus or get discontinued. I'll be posting consistently every week on Friday, starting next Friday._**

 ** _I'm so excited to share this with everyone! I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. As ever, don't forget to review - I really do want to hear everyone's thoughts, both to improve my writing/plot (so yes, you are free to nicely point out negative things, too) and to give me motivation to start writing the next story._**

 ** _Cheers!_**

* * *

 _"Flat line, no pulse, but eyes open,_

 _single file like soldiers on a mission,_

 _if there's no war outside our heads,_

 _why are we losing?"_

 _-Life Less Frightening, Rise Against_

* * *

Ironically, the voices started in the therapist's office.

Well, it was just one voice but, at the time, it felt like many. There was something different about the voice of the dead. There wasn't a specific source. It was as if the sound engulfed a person just to make them listen. Over time, Dick had adjusted, and it had gotten to the point where, if he just paid the least amount of attention, the voice sounded like any other normal person's. But right there, at that moment, that wasn't the case. He was just a teenager freaked out and panicking in the office of what should have been a one-time visit to a therapist, who he had been trying for the past five minutes to convince that nothing was wrong with him.

"How have you been taking the loss, Dick?" Miss. Frances asked cheerfully, in her eerie way that Dick was becoming fast accustomed to, dipping her head to try and look into Dick's eyes, which were staring at the ground. Dick fought the urge to dramatically scowl.

"Now or before? Now I'm just angry. You know, one of those stages of grief?" And, in her case, stage of PTSD or something equally serious? Honestly, what was that woman's problem? It felt as if she were deliberately trying to prove that something was wrong with him. Miss. Frances nodded and scribbled a little on her clipboard.

"Do you blame him for leaving?" she asked instead. "Is that why you're angry?"

"He's stupid. That's why he died. You can't be angry with stupidity," Dick spat curtly back. It was true. He was angry. But the source was unclear and, if he knew anything at all, Dick was sure that he was less mad at his best friend for being constantly stupid and more mad at himself for letting his best friend be constantly stupid. But, really, that was just how Wally had been.

He hated thinking about it. Ever since the mental simulation gone wrong with the rest of the team, Dick had realised that he wanted no part in becoming Batman's clone, and it was at a point where anything that resembled being like Batman personality-wise had Dick cringing away from it. Brooding over the past, over what he couldn't change, over failures that would never be corrected was a very signature trait of his mentor's, and Dick knew that he shouldn't follow in those footsteps. From a mental health standpoint, ignoring the event completely wasn't a good habit either, but he couldn't help it. He hated it. He despised remembering it. So Dick blocked it out and blocked it out, sitting stiffly in his chair, until he couldn't think anymore. All he had was a strange pain in his chest and he didn't want to think about anything anymore, especially not about Wally.

"I'm not that stupid!"

"What?" Dick started, his back instantly straightening and his hand darting to feel his hips, where he suddenly wished his utility belt was.

"What?" Miss. Frances responded, instantly alert.

"That- did you hear that?" Dick stammered.

"You heard that?" the resonating voice said again.

Dick's eyes widened, but he couldn't make more words move out of his mouth amidst all of the shock. Miss. Frances smiled almost childishly. "Calm down," she soothed. "There are construction workers upstairs, and they've been at it all morning." She winked. Dick didn't know why she was winking.

Dick also didn't think that drills could speak English. "Tell me, Dick, have you been this jumpy lately?" Miss. Frances continued, her high pitched voice ringing in Dick's ears.

The acrobat frowned, heart racing, but he was so used to the adrenaline rush of unknown situations that he managed to keep his voice steady despite the nerves. "I've always been jumpy." His mind was already elsewhere. He needed to get out of there - he wasn't crazy. Crazy was the Joker. Crazy was a little bit of Batman, entirely necessary to catch baddies like they did. He wasn't crazy. But the room was still suffocating.

"Has it increased since the incident?" Miss. Frances pressed.

"...No," Dick answered softly.

Dick walked out of that office ten minutes later, entirely unnerved and spectacularly unsatisfied. He had been beyond uncomfortable in there. Sharing feelings wasn't something that he did, and he supposed that, according to an expert, that was all the more reason to get 'help'. But even if he had wanted to, Dick couldn't get full help from a random civilian. He couldn't explain his frustrations during missions, he couldn't tell her the names of his teammates, he couldn't rant to her about how he hated being _Dick Grayson_ and he just wanted to be _Robin_. He couldn't show her the true scope of how far his and one Wally West's friendship had extended, how they had trusted each other with their lives every day, how they had managed to keep smiling no matter what situation they were in as long as they were near one another. He couldn't even tell her how he had died, and it certainly hadn't been from something so simple as a mugging. Bruce had created that scenario, and Dick was only left to wonder why it so much resembled the deaths of Bruce's parents.

Black Canary, or Dinah as she preferred to be called, would have been a more suitable option, as she knew Robin, but she didn't know Dick. Dick supposed that Bruce really didn't know how to handle therapists. Talking only about one half of his life and lying about the other offered no relief.

Dick had also settled with the conclusion that the voice he had heard in there had just been part of his imagination. Maybe he really did need some recovery time.

Because he swore that it had sounded just like Wally.

Dick didn't hear it again until school a week later. He was drifting off in English class, a subject that he was good at in the same way that he had to be good at everything else. The only thing distracting him was himself. His thoughts were wandering, and wandering, and straying so far off that they were becoming hopelessly lost and tangled. Eventually, they became so lost that there was nothing in his mind at all.

Dick had to consider if that might have been his own relaxing mechanism. There was always something on his mind. Training, school, missions, identities - sometimes, he wanted to just _be._ So, that was what he was doing, his mind wiped clean and his eyes starting to burn because he was forgetting to blink.

"lease...ick...D...p...long...he..p...l…" It sounded like a broken remix, breaks within the echoing techno giving off a feeling of chaos and discord. Dick's heart sped up. It sounded just the same as before - as it had within the office. "Ca...you...me...heard...you heard...you heard me...fore...you heard me before!" When a full sentence did come up, it wasn't as soft and confused sounding as the jumbled syllables from before. It was harsh. It was loud and harsh and screeched against the inside of Dick's skull. He slammed his palms against his ears.

"Can...hear me? Is that...blocking your...are you… can you hear me? Pl…" Dick began shaking his head and rubbing his ears, hoping for that awful sound to go away, but if anything it only got louder. "I can go through...object...solid...sound waves...sure that your hands won't do anything."

What was going on? His thoughts were screaming, telling him to run from it, but he couldn't run. He couldn't even get up. He was in the middle of English class. Running out shouting was sure to earn him a trip straight to the counselor.

"Richard, is there something that you would like not to hear?" Dick instinctively darted his hands away from his face and looked up to see his English teacher glaring down at him with the heat of a thousand suns. Dick blinked and gaped, unsure of how to transition from the surreal panic attack-like event that had just happened to consoling his offended teacher.

"Uh, no," breathed Dick, attempting to calm his racing heart. Mr. Billard, his teacher, didn't look the least bit amused. He must have mistaken the cause of the catastrophe of emotions on Dick's face for something else, though, and only stood there for a second more before walking back to his desk.

However, the second that Mr. Billard moved, Dick could clearly see what was directly behind him. It felt like his heart jumped and stopped at the same time.

"Don't you recognise me?" Wally asked, looking just as colourful and healthy as he had the last time that Dick had seen him. The only difference was that his emerald eyes glittered with a suspicious liquid and his mouth held a morphed expression of sadness that was entirely unsuited for his face.

Dick screamed.

* * *

He awoke in a hospital bed. Dick knew that for certain because he was awake before he opened his eyes, and the incessant beeping of the heart monitor was all too clear. Usually, after he was heavily injured and ended up in such a place, he wouldn't remember what had happened until he was given a reminder by someone walking in or by the room itself.

But that time, he remembered. He remembered perfectly, and it felt as if he hadn't slept at all, because Dick could still feel the tendrils of panic and stress gripping his heart. He felt like crying and, suddenly, for the first time in a long time, Dick wanted anything but to be alone.

He changed his mind a couple of seconds later.

"Finally! Thank God you're okay." The voice sounded almost as panicked as Dick felt, on top of concerned and nervous. It kickstarted Dick's own heart to start racing again and the tear that was gathering in his eye fell at last. The monitor went insane. He didn't want to look around the room. The voice sounded just like Wally's and Dick had seen Wally and that meant Wally was probably with him in that room and that was a scary, scary thought because _Wally had exploded, he shouldn't have been alive, couldn't have been alive._

Dick wasn't insane. He swore that he wasn't insane.

"Are you crying?" Wally's voice exclaimed. "Are you okay? No, no, you're not okay, you freaking fainted, man, and I know that's probably because of me but-you-really-shouldn't-be-afraid-it's-just-me-and-I-can't-believe-you-can-even-hear-me. It's-a-miracle-dude-I've-been-trying-for-so-long-"

"Shut up!" Dick screeched, and Wally did. Dick slowly exhaled. "You're not real, you're not real-"

"What?" Not-Wally sounded so offended that Dick stuttered in his own chanting. He continued, though, over Not-Wally's words, still hearing them and not wanting to at all. "I'm real. I'm real! Dick, no, I'm real! Stop!" he was frantic, suddenly appearing at the foot of Dick's bed. Dick shut his eyes tightly. "I'm right here, man. Please. You have to help me. You're the only one who can hear me, let alone see me," Wally begged. Then the redhead took a deep breath and shouted, "Dick!"

Dick was startled into silence, Wally's shout bouncing around inside of his head.

"Answer something for me, Dick, please. At least give me that," Wally continued softly, and Dick slowly opened his eyes to see stunning green ones instead. But there was something different about them. Even without their happy shine, Dick thought that there was something off, but he couldn't put a word to it. "What happened?" When Dick didn't respond, he elaborated. "What happened to me?"

"Exploded," Dick croaked out softly. "You exploded. We...got a mission. In California. They were making some illegal chemical compounds or something, but they found out we were inspecting them, so they...put a bomb. In the building. You...I found out, and you grabbed it and ran, but it…it exploded."

Dick remembered that. He remembered standing, pressed against the window of the building that had once held the bomb and seeing the yellow streak that was Kid Flash zipping away. What he remembered most, however, was seeing his best friend reach a building some ways away from the window that Dick had been looking out of just as that building seemed to explode for no reason.

He used to remember a body, too. But those memories were buried so deeply that Dick didn't think he could ever dig them out again. That was the moment when Dick thought that he had discovered why Wally's eyes looked so different.

They were dead.

"I'm really dead," Wally said shakily. "I actually...died." There was silence for a moment. "I never really thought that I could die, y'know? I've, we've, gone into so many situations where most other people would die plenty times over, but us… We didn't. And I guess I just got so used to that."

"Are you trying to tell me that you're a ghost?" Dick swallowed. Whatever that was happening was not happening. It couldn't be happening. But Wally's eyes creased downwards and his lips parted just the smallest bit and he looked like he wanted to cry.

"What else could I be? I can't touch anything, I go right through. The only thing I don't go through is the dirt," he hissed, before his voice softened sadly. "No one can hear me or see me. Winds usually blow me away - literally. I can't feel anything but myself. I'm never hot or cold, but I can still feel my own emotions, and they're usually painful." He continued past what was necessary to answer Dick's question, probably speaking more than he had first intended, and he didn't seem as if he were able to close his mouth. "It's like- it's like- oh my God, Dick, I'm just- I'm so happy that I finally have someone to talk to. How long's it been? I don't know, I don't know, but it's been so long, and-"

That was when Wally finally burst into tears, with the illusion of salty water that disappeared the second it fell off of his cheek. "Dick, you have to help me. Please, help me," he sobbed.

"I don't know how," Dick breathed, eyes wide and, though he wouldn't say so later, tearing up at the sight of his friend that looked so real, so solid, crying as if he would never be able to stop. He didn't think he'd ever seen his friend like that. He hadn't thought he ever would. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Dick felt so spent that he couldn't garner up the energy to cry with him.

"Don't know how to do what?" Dick jumped and whipped his head around to stare at the door opposite of where he had been originally looking. There was a tall woman in a white coat standing there with her mousey brown hair gathered tightly into a ponytail, a clipboard in her hand and a frown on her face. She was waiting for an answer.

Wally answered for him. "How to help me," he said, wiping away his tears angrily and attempting to slam his fist on the table beside Dick's bed. He only grew more frustrated when it went straight through. Dick's eyebrows creased and his eyes dried in relief at the distraction from the onslaught of distraught emotions.

"Calm down," he demanded, and Wally only crossed his arms tightly. Dick was surprised at how easily he was able to get used to Wally's presence. Then again, Dick and Wally were the best of friends, weren't they?

"Why can't you calm down?" the nurse asked slowly.

Dick stared at her. "You can't see-" Of course she couldn't see Wally. But Wally just looked so real and Dick was so used to him being real that the acrobat was having a hard time comprehending that it was possible for someone not to notice the redhead.

"No," Wally interrupted quickly, and he looked frantic. "No one else can see me but you. I've tried."

Dick was about to demand why Wally hadn't told him that earlier, but by the look on the nurse's face, he knew that wouldn't help the situation at all. He decided to pretend that Wally was just as he had always been. Wally was there and Dick wasn't crazy, so Dick was just going to think that everything was normal. It was easier.

"See what?" she asked.

"The birds," Wally said quickly.

"The birds," Dick echoed. Her eyebrows shot up her forehead and he glared briefly at Wally, who shrugged sheepishly. "Uh, yeah, outside. They kept flying into the window and I was telling them to calm down," he elaborated, tilting his head with an award-winning smile.

To Dick's distress, the nurse glanced at her clipboard and quickly scribbled something down. He barely kept himself from groaning aloud.

"Alright, well, I'm just here to check your vitals. If everything's good, we'll call your dad to come pick you up," she explained as she moved over to the heart monitor. Dick nodded and the room was quickly bathed in silence. At least, silence for the nurse.

"You have a dad?" Wally exclaimed, and Dick was startled by the sudden change in subject. Though, Wally never did have the best attention span. "I thought- y'know, the circus and all-"

"Kind of. He's my guardian," Dick whispered when the nurse was at the sink on the other side of the room. Then he frowned. "Wait, hold up. You know my name's Dick, where I go to school, my backstory, and yet you don't know who I live with?"

Wally frowned. "What was I supposed to do, Google you? Searching up 'Dick' probably isn't the best course of action, dude. I don't know your last name, remember? It's not like Google gives us non-movie stars our family trees, anyway. I don't care who your family is." Dick snorted at that. Wally would be surprised how much of a family tree Google could give for the wards of billionaires.

"So you don't recognise me?" asked Dick incredulously.

"...Should I?"

If Dick were honest, he found it kind of endearing how Wally hadn't immediately jumped on stalking his entire history upon finding out his first name. "Nah," Dick said. "You're good."

"You're good," the nurse copied, straightening up. "Your father will be here in a few minutes." She smiled kindly and left.

Wally pouted. "Oh come on, nurses were never that nice to me whenever _I_ ended up in the hospital."

Dick shrugged it off, figuring that Wally would find out why normal civilians tended to be so nice to him sooner or later. But since the nurse was gone, Dick found that he was definitely not in the mood for casual chatter. "How come I'm the only one who can see you, if you're a ghost like you say?"

"If I'm not a ghost and you can see me, what else could I be?" Wally frowned. "A hallucination? Yeah, right." It seemed that the redhead was more unnerved by the possibility of Dick thinking that he was a hallucination than he let on, however, because he quickly continued talking. "But I really don't know. Barry can't see me. Iris can't see me. Did you do something...special before hearing me?"

"'Special'?" Dick snorted. "Like what, dark magic? I don't know how to summon ghosts, Wally."

"You're a bat. Dark magic is totally a possibility. Not that magic is real or anything," replied the redhead. "I meant something with your mind. M'gann can kind of mentally force her way into other people's thoughts, right? That's something with her mind. Hers is a species thing, of course, but...I don't know, it's worth thinking about."

It was worth thinking about. "Well, I was spacing out? In class, at least. Yeah, I was spacing out in English," Dick replied. Wally perked up.

"Spacing out? That's it? Spacing out as in your mind was kind of blank and you weren't thinking about anything? It actually makes sense," Wally rambled excitedly. "If your mind is blank, then you can hear things that would otherwise be obscured by your thoughts. Or you could hear me because you weren't thinking about anything and I could get my...ghostly sound waves or something into your head. And now that you've heard and seen me, you're aware of my existence, which means you can hear and see me all the time." He grinned. "I never knew you were a spacey person."

"I'm not," Dick defended. "Just during class when I already know everything that's being said."

"Wow, modest much?"

"It's true," shrugged the acrobat.

It was finally settling in. The scare was over, and Dick had momentarily forgotten about the horrible grieving line of events for the sole fact that he was able to banter with Wally as if they were both suiting up at the mountain again. But finally, it was finally registering. What if Wally really was a ghost? As much as Dick didn't want him to be dead…

It was better than him being gone.

And that made him happier than he'd been in months. That happiness was reflected in Wally's face, the same one that had been sad and angry minutes before. Wally was a ghost, Dick decided to believe. A ghost who had said that he hadn't been able to get anyone else to see him. Did that mean he had felt as alone as Dick had? Dick had lost a best friend, the one and only person who he had confided everything to. Whenever he saw something funny, he hadn't had anyone to tell it to. Whenever he was sad, he hadn't had anyone to express it to.

And neither had Wally.

That was when the door decided to open. Dick whipped his head around briefly to look at one Bruce Wayne, but, much to Bruce's puzzlement, he turned his head back to the window to look pointedly at Wally.

Wally rose his eyebrows, but otherwise didn't react. "You have a dad who looks like that and is still single? I'm finally not the only single attractive man," he commented. Dick laughed.

"Uh, Dick?" Bruce prodded.

Dick turned to Bruce and grinned, which only grew as Bruce's eyes widened in surprise. He couldn't blame his guardian, though. When was the last time that Dick had actually looked happy? "Hey, Bruce Wayne!" he exclaimed with a wave.

Wally sputtered.

"Holy shit!" he yelled in surprise, rushing right up to Bruce's shoulder and staring him in the face. "Oh my God, I knew I recognised him! Man, I never watch the news. Is this why- freaking hot damn your dad is Bruce Wayne, no wonder you're so filthy rich!"

Dick couldn't hold it in. He burst into a fit of cackles at the blunt awe displayed on Wally's face, and when he had slightly recovered in order to look back up again, Bruce's pure expression of utter bewilderment sent him through another round.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey, guys! Technically, it's Thursday, but I live in one of the world's earliest time zones and I'm heartbreakingly busy all of tomorrow, so here you go. It's another 'setting the stage' type, unfortunately. But stick with me! I promise you won't regret it.**

 **As always, tell me what you think! Enjoy!**

* * *

"Dare I ask what's gotten Master Dick into such a frenzy?" Alfred asked from where he was cleaning the window sills of the dining hall. Bruce Wayne, leaning against the railing of their manor's winding staircase, shrugged.

"I have no clue. I got a phone call from the school saying that he had a panic attack and fainted. He even screamed, which he never does. But when I went to the hospital to pick him up, he said my name and just started laughing," Bruce answered, confused. "And he's been smiling ever since."

"Well, then I suppose you should be grateful that your ward is so happy," said Alfred as he turned with a raised eyebrow to consider his master. "Especially since he hasn't been happy for quite a while now."

"I know, I know," waved Bruce. "But... it isn't natural," he muttered. "Dick doesn't even have a reason to be happy."

"Perhaps he's simply moved on?"

"I wish. But it's too sudden for that. I need to look into it."

Alfred rolled his eyes. "I do wish you would consider not treating Master Richard as if he were an experiment. Sadly, I can't request that of you because it seems to be the only way that you know how to be a father."

"You know me so well, Alfred," Bruce commented wryly, before moving off the staircase and into the manor's rather large library.

Meanwhile, Dick couldn't remember the last time that he'd felt so light. It was as if his heart wasn't constricted by his ribs at all, like his lungs were balloons of latex and not layers of flesh. Before, his organs had been submerged six feet underwater, but right then? They were aired out, as if they had been hung on a clothesline to dry.

All that while sitting in the outside courtyard at school.

"I really want a sandwich," Wally commented from across the table, where only Dick was sitting. The mathlete had been let out early from his math class because his teacher had figured out long ago that he would need to be transferred to a higher math level, but had yet to sign the papers. That left Dick with a free pass to the class, which was completely fine with him. Wally ogled the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the acrobat's hands. "Like that one."

"Do ghosts even get hungry?" Dick asked.

"No," Wally huffed. "What am I going to do? Starve to death?"

Dick smiled maliciously as he bit slowly into the bread. "Then it's all mine."

"Mean!"

"You can't touch it, anyway," laughed Dick.

"Doesn't mean you have to eat it in front of me," whined Wally, despite the fact that it was Dick's lunch time.

"Dick?" Dick felt his cheeks redden as Wally whipped his head around to watch another red head, a girl, poke her head through the door that connected to the main hallway. The acrobat tried to imagine how he must have looked from the window, laughing to himself while alone in the courtyard, but figured that he would rather not think about it.

"Hey, Babs," responded Dick.

"'Babs'?" Wally echoed. "More like Babes, if you ask me."

"Hey, Dick," greeted Barbara. She moved fully away from the door and kicked it closed behind her, swinging a lunchbox by her side. Dick bit his tongue as she moved to sit on top of Wally, whose eyes widened as he dived away just in time for her to settle herself. She must have still seen the painfully amused expression on Dick's face, though, because she frowned when she glanced up at him. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Dick dismissed. Wally stuck out his tongue from behind the girl.

Barbara studied the acrobat for a moment, and if Dick weren't so used to being scrutinised by Batman, he might have been uncomfortable. "Who gave you a vacation to the Caribbean?"

"What?" Dick blinked, pausing in the middle of his sandwich. The girl rolled her eyes.

"You look really happy," she explained.

Dick snorted. "Am I not allowed to be?"

Barbara shrugged, but gave him a small smile anyway. "I've been trying to get you to for a long time, yet you're smiling bright and sunny without a problem right after having gone to the hospital." She probably wouldn't have admitted it, but Dick felt guilty to see a flicker of concern flit over her face.

"Really, I'm fine," Dick reassured. "I just... discovered something yesterday. It cheered me up. Besides, it's Friday, how can someone not be happy on a Friday?"

"Parents with children that they hate," Wally quipped. He was ignored.

Barbara shook her head incredulously. "Whatever you say." She was smiling but, much to Dick's dismay, the both of them still lapsed into silence.

It was only then that he took the time to notice how much their relationship had changed. Dick had gotten quiet and withdrawn after Wally's... passing. He had been so absorbed in his own feelings of pain that he had taken no note of how he had acted towards others, and how much he had been damaging the parts of his life that he had still had. That caused his lips to morph into a frown as Barbara focused her attention on her spaghetti.

"You guys are friends, but you don't talk?" Wally asked, confused. Dick glanced at Barbara.

"Do you have some paper?" he asked. The girl nodded and took a small notebook from her lunchbox as Dick reached into his pocket for a pencil. He tilted the writing surface towards him when she handed it over, ignoring the curious cock of her head.

 **We weren't like this before** , he scribbled quickly over the paper.

Wally was still hovering behind Barbara, but he rushed over when Dick gave him a miniscule nod. Reading the scrawl, he frowned. "What changed?"

"Why'd you need the paper?" Barbara asked as Dick ripped out the page and folded it up, sliding it into his pocket.

"A note," he replied simply.

* * *

Miss. Frances was infinitely curious when Dick walked into her office that day with a bounce in his step. His reasoning was that the faster that they could get through the session, the faster that Dick would never have to go back there again.

Being a therapist, though, she seemed to ignore the blatantly obvious question and delved straight into the indirect. "How has your day been?"

Dick grinned. "Great. Yours?"

She smiled. "Fantastic, now that I see a smile on your face. Anything really good happen?"

Dick paused to mentally review his day. He had made his own lunch in the morning because he couldn't stand still, he got stared at in the hallways and especially in English class, he was called to the nurse's office, he got to skip math class, and, "I got my friend back." He glanced at Wally, who was standing with crossed arms over Miss. Frances's shoulder, reading her notes.

"Oh? What friend?" she asked, placing her clipboard down into her lap.

"Her name is Barbara"-Wally pouted theatrically at that-"and we've been distant for a while now. I decided to talk to her more in the halls after lunch, though, and I think she's excited to be a close friend of mine again."

Miss. Frances hummed and nodded. "Why did you become distant?" she inquired.

Dick shrugged, feeling completely awkward talking about the reason when the reason was standing in the room, but it seemed as if Wally understood anyway. The redhead stilled in shock.

"Wait...," he started hesitantly. "Am I why-"

He was cut off by Miss. Frances. "Was it because of Wally?" Everything she said sounded happy and casual, as if her words didn't hold bigger weight than she gave them credit for. Or maybe that impression was only given by the fact that she had a high voice and one of the thickest accents that Dick had ever heard.

"I just didn't think there was a point in talking to anyone," he answered honestly. Wally's face dropped in guilt.

"I'm the reason that you have to go to a shrink?" he squeaked. Dick felt his palms sweat suspiciously.

But the therapist only continued to smile. "That's good. It means you're moving on," she commented, chipper. "What do you think has started allowing you to cope?"

"A friend," Dick replied. "A really good friend came back."

"It seems like you have lots of friends. Are you popular at school?"

"No, but the friends that I do have are really close."

Miss. Frances nodded and wrote some more. Wally gawked at her notes behind her. "He's totally social enough, you stupid lady!"

Dick snorted in an effort to contain his laughter. The woman must have mistaken it for a sneeze, because she smoothly threw over a box of tissues.

"Does anything in particular remind you of Wally?" she asked. "Other people's actions, words, voices?"

"Of course," Dick scowled. "Everything does." Particularly since Wally was actually following him around.

Miss. Frances nodded. "And what about the voices? Are the voices from other people, like your classmates? Or do you hear voices that no one else does?"

Dick barely fought to keep his eyes from widening. Wally had no such restraint, though, and looked openly shocked. The acrobat hadn't considered himself to be obvious about the fact that he was being clung to by his best friend's ghost, but maybe the therapist had a part time job in exorcism.

That was a scary thought.

"I hear voices," Dick agreed, and Wally waved his arms in panic. Miss. Frances stilled. "Yours," he finished, smiling innocently and looking behind her at Wally.

Wally glared as Miss. Frances relaxed and gave a genuinely amused chuckle. "You shouldn't joke about that, Richard," she warned. Dick shrugged.

"I wasn't."

Thirty minutes of casual conversation and uncomfortable interrogation later found Dick walking out of the office with less of a bounce in his step than before. Wally was right on his heels, making sure to turn his head and stick his tongue out obnoxiously at the therapist as they walked away. Bruce had just entered through the doors to the waiting room, tie swung around his shoulder from the wind outside, and Dick laughed cheekily at the sight. Bruce only rolled his eyes as he went to talk in hushed tones with the therapist at the office door.

"So, Daddy Bats isn't actually real?" Wally asked, attempting to lean casually against the arm of the couch, but failing when he fell through. Dick coughed to cover his giggles and took out his phone.

[What do you mean?] Wally looked at the phone screen that was opened to messages, which the redhead saw was sending texts to Dick's number, as his body remained half impaled by the couch. Dick turned his head to avoid looking at the unnerving sight that was his best friend divided by a piece of furniture.

"Well, we all thought Batman was your dad, but it's actually Bruce Fucking Wayne, so who's Batman? Come on, it's not like I can tell anyone," the boy elaborated. Dick's eyebrows shot up his forehead.

[Just imagine Bruce in a Bat costume, dude.]

Wally huffed and opened his mouth to answer, jumping away from the couch as he did so, but paused instead. Dick braced himself but, to his surprise, Wally only took a deep breath and slowly rubbed his face. "So, first you tell me that your daddy is the richest guy in the state, and then you say that said richest guy is also the scariest guy in America."

[Pretty much.]

"Who dresses up like a bat and beats up clowns every night."

Dick cackled. "Yup."

The little girl kicking her legs on the other end of the couch looked at him strangely. Dick swallowed and glanced back at his phone, pretending to be doing something productive, but he could still feel the unashamed gaze of the child on the side of his face. Wally didn't say much more, preferring to simply stand there and absorb the information when Bruce walked by. The man flashed the secretary a sunny smile on his way past, and Wally scrunched up his face.

"Seeing Batman smile is so weird," he commented, wrinkling his nose.

"Ready to go?" Bruce asked as he reached Dick, who was already standing up. The teenager quickly pocketed his phone.

"Yup," he said.

Bruce nodded. "How long do you think your homework will take?" inquired the man as he closed the waiting room door behind them. The neat hallway was empty, and the pair's footsteps echoed loudly as they moved to the stairs. Wally followed in front, backpedaling to face them, his gaze fixated on Bruce's eyes.

Dick found it strange how Bruce, of all people, couldn't see the person right in front of him. But if Dick and Wally's theory was correct, there was no way that Bruce ever allowed his mind to become empty long enough to see a ghost. Dick supposed that there was at least one advantage to not paying attention in class and, even then, Dick didn't think that being able to see a ghost was an advantage. More like a clip from a horror film. A comedic horror, where Wally was involved. "A few hours if I take my time, an hour if I rush," Dick replied.

"I'll call you downstairs at 5, then," settled Bruce.

"Do I get to hang out with my friends?" Dick piped excitedly. Wally furrowed his eyebrows at the strangely normal conversation, but Dick knew that Wally would eventually understand what, exactly, he and Bruce were actually talking about.

"That, or you can stay home. I have a meeting to get to," Bruce said, a tap to his thigh showing Dick that he didn't mean just any other meeting.

"Score!" cheered Dick.

"What?" Wally butt in. Dick waved him off with his wrist, which Bruce looked at uncomprehendingly for a second. Dick shook his head to tell the man that he wasn't talking to him, but that seemed only to confuse Bruce more.

It took a while to get back to the manor, considering the traffic of downtown Gotham and the absurdly long drive it took in a non-upgraded vehicle to get up their driveway, but Dick was eventually running upstairs.

Wally was far, far behind him.

"I can't believe this place!" he practically squealed, already staring at Dick's reflection in every shiny object only because he couldn't stare at his own. "It's so...so…."

"Rich?" Dick supplied.

"Yeah!"

More time was wasted attempting to get Wally to calm down. By the amount of times that Wally went through expensive objects just getting to Dick's bedroom, though, Dick figured that maybe there was a good side to not being solid. At least Wally wouldn't break every antique Alfred spent his day fawning over. Unfortunately, after Wally had recovered enough to speak a sentence that didn't comment on the way the manor looked, the redhead went straight into obsessing over the sheer amount of video games in Dick's possession.

"You have to play all of them," the redhead demanded. "Right now. Just for me."

To Wally's loud disappointment, Dick didn't do as he asked. In fact, Dick didn't so much as look at the video games. Instead, the acrobat immediately sat down behind his great wooden desk and yanked his binder from his backpack.

"Homework?" the redhead protested. "Now? Can't you do that later?"

Dick shook his head. "Batman and Robin have to go to the mountain later. It's the weekend, I'll play some tonight."

"How do you know that you guys are going to the mountain?" Wally asked, confused. "Batman never said that."

"Yeah, he did. At the therapist's," replied Dick with a smirk.

"What? No, I was right there!"

At least Dick knew that Batman's paranoia was working.

"Master Dick?" There was a knock on Dick's bedroom door and the acrobat froze up for a second, glancing at Wally with intentions of hiding the boy. He could have hit himself after he had that moment of thought, though. How did someone hide a ghost?

It brought a new meaning to the phrase 'hiding in plain sight'. "Come in," Dick called.

"'Master Dick'?" Wally snorted.

Alfred appeared at the door with a tray of lasagna and orange juice. Dick tried not to draw attention to the fact that he was amused when Wally eyeballed the plate. "I've brought dinner," the elderly man stated.

Dick paused in his search for a sharpened pencil. "Dinner? It's only four," he questioned.

"Four-fifteen. I would have waited until the usual time, but Master Bruce is rather adamant that he get to the meeting before then," the butler sighed. "I wish he wouldn't do that. Especially not with you. As far as I'm concerned, you are perfectly capable to join him after dinner at six."

Dick grinned apologetically, offering a shrug in response. He quickly cleared away a portion of his desk so that Alfred was able to set down the tray of food. "Thanks," he answered. "I didn't realise how hungry I was."

"You never do," replied Alfred. "You're due down at five on the dot, but I'll see if I can't persuade Master Bruce into giving you some more time for your work. I say education is more important than odd nightly activities."

"Sounds good," Dick agreed. Alfred nodded once before closing the door behind him.

"You have a butler?" asked Wally. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Alfred's less like my butler and more like my grandfather," the acrobat admitted. "And he's a lot easier to talk to than Bruce. I mean, about emotions and stuff. Advice. The only advice you should go to Bruce for is how far away to stay from the Joker."

"And how far is that?" Wally humoured.

"There isn't a distance far enough," quipped Dick.

"And yet, he lets you go out in spandex to throw bird shaped ninja stars at him on a regular basis." Wally replied, rubbing his chin.

Dick only rolled his eyes and waved him off, gesturing animatedly to his homework. To drive his point across, the performer made a show of finding his headphones and placing them over his ears. Wally left to explore the rest of the manor in a huff. He only returned once to bother Dick, yelling about how scary the manor was, until Dick reminded Wally that he was a ghost.


	3. Chapter 3

**And here it is: the conflict is starting up! I'm so excited. Thanks for all the comments, lovely people! I love hearing from you all. I put a lot of effort into this story and it's like I'm getting freshly baked cookies from the cookie jar every time I get a review.**

 **I sincerely hope you enjoy Chapter 3!**

* * *

Wally followed Dick to the mountain expecting to find everyone scattered around the living room and kitchen, jesting as they always did. What he found was silence.

"Hello?" Dick called loudly, and Wally winced as the boy's voice bounced throughout the empty space. There was the swift click of footsteps before a blonde head poked out from the kitchen.

"In here, Robin," Artemis said blandly. Dick quickly followed her into the other room. There was an assortment of lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, and bread sprawled over the counters.

"Binge eating much?" inquired Dick, and Artemis looked startled, pausing as she spread mayonnaise over a slice of bread. Dick tilted his head. "What?"

Artemis just shrugged. "Nothing, you just haven't joked around in a...while," she admitted, before giving a hesitant smile. "It's nice. Are you having a nice day?"

"Did I just hear blondie ask that?" Wally gawked from behind Dick.

Dick ignored the redhead. "Great, actually," he said cheerily as he hopped onto the counter beside the archer, kicking his legs. "I haven't seen you in forever. Where've you been?"

Artemis hummed noncommittally, slapping her covered bread on top of the tomato, turkey, and lettuce occupying the other slice. She leaned back against the counter, facing the fridge instead of her teammate. "I was taking some time off. Focusing on school and whatnot. What about you?"

She wasn't. Wally knew that because she happened to go to Dick's school. In fact, she rarely showed up for class at all. But neither of them could point that out. "You could say the same. Batman's been driving me up a wall," Dick replied. He stole a glance back at Wally, who kept trying to reach for Artemis' sandwich. She took a bite out of it and Wally recoiled in disappointment. "What about the others?"

Wally frowned at Dick. "We're a team, shouldn't we always stick together?"

"M'gann and SB still live here, though they aren't here right now," Artemis replied. "I've tried talking to M'gann before, but I think she can only really stand to be around SB because, y'know, he doesn't really understand that Wally's gone. I mean, I think he gets it but doesn't know how to express it. It's less overwhelming for her, y'know?" She closed her eyes and sighed before continuing. "Kaldur started up training again in Atlantis."

Dick nodded. There was a beat of silence before he hopped off the counter and clapped his hands together. "Well, we'll just have to fix that," he declared.

Artemis' eyebrow immediately rose. "Fix what? The team? We're still on suspension."

"Suspension?" Wally echoed.

Dick looked straight at Wally, who was hovering behind Artemis, when he replied. "Suspension because the team's still broken up about KF." Wally flinched.

Artemis nodded agreeably. "Yeah, that."

"Can we have just one conversation today that doesn't involve my death?" Wally grimaced. "I feel like I ruined everyone's lives."

Dick, unsurprisingly, didn't answer. Instead, he turned his attention to the open refrigerator, automatically scanning his eyes over the presented foods as if they were second nature. As Wally observed, though, the full stock of food seemed to throw him off, and he shut it with a wince. "And no, not the team. The team isn't over, remember? But we're sure going to fix our friendships. We're still buds, and buds don't forget about each other for two months," exclaimed Dick.

"Didn't bother you before," muttered Artemis. Wally wasn't sure whether or not Dick had heard, he didn't act like he did, but the redhead felt angry at the blonde's words. He kind of wished that he hadn't spent so much time trying to get the attention of Barry and Iris when he first became a ghost and instead thought to hang around his friends a bit. It made him feel guilty. He had thought about them, of course, but he selfishly hadn't wanted to see their banter go on without him.

He shouldn't have worried. It hadn't.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Dick asked as he closed the refrigerator and leaned up against it. Artemis stiffened.

In the end, the girl only sighed and deflated again. "It doesn't feel like just two months since I was last here. GA had a meeting at the Watchtower, so I decided to catch up on my daily dose of nostalgia. You?"

"Batman's at that meeting," he shrugged. "I thought that someone would be here."

Artemis nodded, but said nothing more.

"Come on," Wally urged, hovering nervously behind Artemis. "Harpy, say something mean. Or rude. Or just insult my best bro over there. Something. Rob? Rob, tell her - us - one of your stupid puns. Just, something. Guys?" Dick bit his lip. "Guys?"

"I don't think-," Dick started automatically in response to Wally's plea, but Wally didn't believe that even Dick knew what he was going to say. Artemis didn't move, but her eyes flickered to her teammate. Dick took a deep breath. "I don't think Wally would like this."

Artemis froze up again, and it took her a few seconds to respond. "Like what?"

"This," Dick responded vaguely. A sigh. "Us. He wouldn't like what we've become."

The girl didn't have a rebuttal for that. Even if she did, though, Dick didn't give her the time to come up with one. He plastered a smile onto his face so quickly that anyone who didn't know better would never have guessed that he had just mentioned his dead best friend, Wally observed. Dick planted his palm on the counter and used it as leverage to smoothly land on the other side, racing for the couch.

"Robin?" Artemis called, bewildered. She put the remains of her sandwich down. Dick had opened up the cabinet beneath the television and was rifling through its contents, throwing most of it over his shoulder. She looked at the covers of various movie discs as she approached. Wally watched them from afar.

"Lion King, Princess Diary, Bruce Almighty, Twilight, Fast and Furious, Skyfall...aha!" Artemis cocked a hip and crossed her arms as she waited for Dick to reveal what it was that he had found. He turned to her with a brilliant smile. "21 Jump Street!"

"You think 21 Jump Street is better than Lion King?" Artemis asked incredulously.

"I think 21 Jump Street is funnier than Lion King. And I like funny," Dick exclaimed as he popped the disc into the television without waiting for Artemis' consent and bounced backwards onto the couch.

"Whatever," the blonde said with a scowl, walking back into the kitchen. Wally watched as she reached to grab the popcorn, just as Wally used to do before movies, before thinking better of it and heading back to the couch. The redhead was left to stare at the half opened and abandoned cabinet, wanting with all his willpower just to open a package of popcorn and give it to his friends. Artemis sat down on the other side of the couch, leaving a space between her and Dick.

Both teammates had already seen the movie before, and Artemis wasn't expecting to enjoy it all. Wally could tell that much. She didn't even attempt to appear the least bit interested. But then again, she probably hadn't been expecting Dick to burst out cackling and giggling at comments that she probably didn't even find funny. Against all odds, Wally realised that she was smiling only ten minutes into the movie, and laughing by the twenty minute mark.

Around that time was when the zeta tube announced the arrival of two missing faces. M'gann inched into the room cautiously, her bounce gone and Wally felt that it was as if it were replaced with a guarded mind in a vain attempt to protect herself from an onslaught of emotions when she saw Dick, prepared as she was most likely for the grief that had consumed him for so long. Her walls dropped five minutes after staring at her teammate kicking his legs and claiming how much better of a detective he was than the people she saw on the screen. Connor looked mildly alarmed and somewhat disturbed, walking to the back of the couch and propping his elbows on it, focusing his attention on the movie to see what all the fuss was about.

M'gann, with the grace of everything that Wally hadn't seen in months, skipped gleefully to join them. Wally figured that Dick must have known exactly how M'gann was going to react, and he gave the girl a sideways glance with the smallest smile. It was then that Wally realised Dick was barely giving the movie any of his actual attention.

Even Barry and Dinah joined them, but when he saw Flash, Wally felt something drop heavily in his chest. He left for the kitchen. The two mentors, like Wally, were also quick to leave but, unlike Wally, they left in much higher spirits than when they had entered.

* * *

"Black Canary," Bruce called the moment that he had stepped into the Watchtower. The meeting had already ended, and he was there to grab some last minute files that Green Arrow had failed to mention until the man had been about to leave, before deciding that it was also an ideal time to pitch forward certain concerns of his.

Bruce itched to get back. He was more than well aware that Dick could handle himself in a mountain filled with his friends, but it was already nine at night and the two still had to patrol Gotham. At the rate they were going, Dick was going to have to start saying that he was insomniatic to the teachers who kept asking about his lack of sleep.

"Yes, Batman?" Black Canary asked from the computer that she was rooted behind. She quickly kicked her legs so that the chair swivelled to face the just arriving man. She was holding a packet of files in her arms. "If it's about these, Oliver meant to give them to you," she said. Bruce nodded as he took them from her grasp.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," he started just as she moved to turn back around. The woman in black paused and glanced at her teammate.

"Oh?" she inquired curiously.

"Has Robin come to you with anything?" Bruce asked. The blonde woman in front of him frowned and gave him her full attention, folding her hands in her lap.

"You mean comfort? Therapy?" she clarified. At Bruce's confirmation, she continued, frown deeper than ever. "I can't tell you anything about the sessions I have with the team. You know that. But no, he hasn't asked for a room. Why?"

Bruce sighed softly, running a palm down his face as his teammate looked on in concern. He couldn't understand the way that Black Canary helped people. She listened to them in ways that Bruce didn't think he ever could. It was debatable who loved human life more, of course, and Bruce had hard morals that were permanently set in stone, but that was all physical. When it got down to the emotionally relatable level, it was safe to say that Black Canary had him beat. "He's been acting strange," he admitted.

That made the blonde confused. "'Strange'?" she echoed. "You mean happy?"

There was an element to her voice that Bruce couldn't place. "Yes, he's happy, but it doesn't make any sense. I feel like there's something off," he elaborated.

Black Canary considered her options for a moment before responding. "Maybe he's finally come to peace with the situation? I know it might seem a little random, but that could be because we were just used to him being so... depressed," she said carefully. Bruce could hear what she didn't say, and it made him want to look over his life from another perspective. Not to change it, but to acknowledge how other people viewed him. That was what Black Canary did to people. She made them think. Not about cases and not about missions, but about themselves. Bruce knew, in between her sentences, she was telling him that just because Bruce hadn't taken loss in the 'right way' didn't mean that his partner would turn out the same. They were not the same. Bruce knew that. But it was still a hard thing to remember when the only lessons he had left to teach Dick would turn Dick into his clone.

Bruce scowled. "So you don't feel like there's anything weird going on?" he demanded. Black Canary sighed.

"Let him be happy, Batman. I know it isn't like you to just leave things be, but don't do something that you're going to regret," she warned. There it was again. That something to her voice which Bruce couldn't pinpoint.

"My instincts haven't failed me yet," he growled, clutching the files in his hands as he spun around. His cape fluttered against his thigh as he began swiftly walking back to the zeta tube.

"Batman," Black Canary called as Bruce began typing Mount Justices' coordinates into the machine. "If you're right, and something is up..."-Bruce paused in interest-"maybe it's for the best. He's happy. Robin hasn't been this happy in a long time. Whatever it is that's making him this way - don't ruin it."

That's where their morals in human life were different. Black Canary relied on happiness in life. Bruce, on the other hand, already lived in the darkness. His comfort was the truth.

But did Robin need the same darkness as Bruce had in his life?

Bruce thought about that as he stood under the zeta beam and the light whisked him away. He was staring at Mount Justice's living room not seconds later. In it was Dick, bending backwards over the couch in order to make funny faces at Artemis as she tried focusing on the math textbook propped on her knee.

No, probably not.

But Batman still had morals, and those morals were permanently set in stone.

* * *

 **Note: There's a reason that I keep switching between real names (informal) and superhero names (formal). For everyone other than Bruce and Dick, calling someone by their superhero name means that they don't know what their real name is. So if I'm in Wally's POV and it refers to 'Batman', it means that Wally doesn't know that Batman's real name is Bruce. For Bruce, if the situation feels formal and official, they're called by their superhero names. Remember, he and Dick know all of the secret identities of the league. If Bruce switches to 'Barry' from 'Flash', it means that the situation became informal and personal. Same goes for Dick. The only name that doesn't apply in that rule for Bruce is Dick, and vice versa.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 4

**And I'm back with the last 'set up' chapter (I think)! Bruce, Bruce, what on Earth are you up to?**

 **I hope you enjoy and leave me a few words of your thoughts! Thank you for the all the reviews so far, you lovely people. c:**

* * *

Dick couldn't help it. No matter where he went, no matter what he did, the smile refused to drop from his face. He had always wanted to spend the day with his best friend, and if he ignored the circumstances in which brought that day, it was almost like a dream come true.

Almost.

Still, he refused to frown. There were reasons to frown, as there always were, but he wasn't about to compromise the time he had to smile just so he could live as he usually did.

It had been a week since Wally had moved into the Wayne manor (without anyone but the ward's permission), and it had been a week filled with mornings just like the one that Dick had been living that day. Or, the beginning of the morning that Dick had been living that day.

"Hey, Bruce!" Dick called as he slid down the winding stair railing. Neither Alfred nor Bruce so much as blinked, Alfred placing the last breakfast tray of bacon on the table and Bruce gingerly sipping his coffee. Dick jumped into his seat, bouncing around in place just for good measure, as if the two (three) other men in the room couldn't recognise that Dick was happy. "What'cha drinkin'?" That was a dumb question. Coffee. Dick already knew that. But he felt as if something had to be said in the oncoming silence.

"Coffee," Bruce replied blandly.

"Boring," Dick claimed. "Drink something fancy. Like tea. Want some tea? Alfred, Bruce would love it if you made him some tea."

"No, Bruce would not," said Bruce.

"He talks in third person outside of costume, too?" Wally exclaimed, causing Dick to choke on the orange juice that he had started to indignantly sip.

"Are you alright, sir?" Alfred asked, eyeing the spilt juice with suspicion. Coughing lightly, Dick giggled and waved his palm.

"Yeah, I'm good," he assured, quickly reaching for the bacon and eating it straight from the tray without bothering to take it to his plate first. "Anything special going on at big, bad ol' Wayne Enterprises?"

"No."

"Really? Then that means you should stay home! Kick back, relax, watch Cartoon Network, yell at Fox News, book a vacation to Romania, all that fun stuff," insisted the acrobat.

"No."

"Maybe they have vampires in Romania. That'll be fun. And there's probably some sort of kidsy Flash shrine airing on CNN, you sure you wanna miss that?"

"No."

"Great, lets go watch!"

"Dick."

"Yeah, I'm a dick, tell me something I don't know," Dick quipped instantly.

"The fact that there's no Flash shrine on CNN?" Wally suggested from his position at the other end of the table. He had been boredly tracing his finger through the air, over curling designs in the wood. "I should know. I checked all the time when I was younger."

"Details," whispered Dick.

"Only details," snorted Wally.

Bruce eyed him with scrutiny, not saying anything for a moment, and Dick was tempted to shift under the man's overbearing gaze. Even Wally's face twisted into something uncomfortable, despite the fact that the man couldn't see him.

Then, he said something that neither Wally nor Dick had ever expected him to say.

"Are you okay?"

Dick's eyes widened as his surprise caused him to slump back into his seat. Even Alfred faltered for a moment as he poured Bruce a new cup of coffee. The acrobat cleared his throat, afraid that he'd croak. "Uh, yeah," he responded, disappointed that his voice didn't even attempt to hide his bewilderment. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Why would you be?" Bruce pressed.

Dick took a moment to digest that sentence before his hand curled into a fist. "What?" he asked, a tinge of hostility leaking into his tone. Not even Dick thought that he'd respond with so much emotion, so much defensive emotion, but he was and he hated how it was probably proving Bruce's point right, whatever that point was. "Am I not allowed to be happy in this manor of death and despair?"

"Excuse my intrusion," Alfred's smooth, accented words drifted over from where he was standing, "but I do believe that Master Bruce is simply curious as to what has made you so happy."

"Maybe I'm just a happy person," Dick snapped. Why was he acting that way? Not even he knew. He had been feeling as if he could fly not minutes before. "Unlike you." No, he needed to stop right there. "You, who doesn't seem like he's even capable of any emotion but revenge and hate." He was going to go too far. He knew that. So why didn't he want to stop?

Bruce, for once, looked taken aback.

Dick abruptly shoved back his chair. "Just because you can't get over yourself and see what's out there doesn't mean that I have to be the same way. I'm not like you. I know how to forgive and move on." Did he? Did he really? Did he forgive Anthony Zucco, the man who had murdered his parents? Did he forgive himself for not warning them, for letting them die?

Had he moved on at all?

He wasn't sad any longer over Wally's death, but that was only because Wally was standing right beside him. Wally wasn't gone.

Bruce didn't say a word in protest when Dick swiveled around and stormed from the room, his footsteps falling heavily in the large echo of the manor. He was hit with the direct sunlight coming from the high windows in the main hall, and he blinked rapidly to adjust to its bright glare. Dick paused, angrily gripping the railing of the winding staircase and hanging his head, sucking in a deep breath.

His heart hurt.

When Wally joined him, it was as if he could feel his presence. Though no sound of footsteps accompanied the redhead, there was an air of watchfulness and a silence that Dick didn't think had followed him before.

"I never argued with my parents," Dick whispered.

It didn't seem that Wally knew how to respond to that. "You were nine," he said instead. "Nine year olds don't usually argue with their parents. Especially not about things like this."

Dick shook his head, but he offered no words to go with his physical protests. Instead, he started up the stairs, his feet dragging just a bit more than before, his eyes trained on the wood. "I miss them," he breathed to his friend. "Want to know why?" He didn't wait for an answer. "They asked me if I was okay when I was sad. Not when I was happy."

Wally was about to open his mouth, though he really didn't know what he was going to say, when a new thought happened to occur to Dick. The acrobat quickly began jumping two steps at a time, racing for his room and throwing the door open. He grabbed his sunglasses and hoodie, pausing only for a split second to stare at them. "You know, I always tried to replace my parents. Put Bruce there instead. It was easier, even if it was wrong. Even if I knew he never could." Dick shoved the glasses onto his face and yanked his arms through the hoodie. "But Bruce can't be my father. He can't even be a father. He can't give happiness when he has no happiness to give. If I want that, I have to get it for myself."

Wally followed as Dick threw open the window and dug a rope out from under his bed. The redhead didn't question the existence of the rope, either, as the living boy tied it to a conveniently placed hook in the ceiling and tossed it outside. He was on the ground, through the garage, and racing down the driveway on his R-Cycle in minutes. Seconds later and he was gone, the redhead in his company having been left behind at the front door.

Wally didn't have superspeed as a ghost. Superspeed was something that had happened to his physical body, and he was no longer in his physical body. His ghost was, essentially, his soul. Just like how when diseased people became ghosts and they no longer suffered from their disease, Wally no longer had his powers. He supposed that Dick forgot to ask, though.

That was the thing. Dick was probably already in the city by then, off to do God knew what. Get to Mount Justice? Probably. Probably to hang out with whatever living friends of his that he could find so that he could forget the drama that had happened at home. Because he could do that. He could sneak into a club if he wanted. He could do some damage, do some good, do anything that he wanted. Whatever he did, it made an effect on the outside world. People would notice. People would remember.

Wally couldn't do any of that. He had no effect. He had no purpose.

He couldn't do anything that made him happy.

He supposed that Dick forgot to ask about that, too.

* * *

When Dick walked into the mountain, the training arena was already set up with Dinah and Superboy dancing on the stage. Not literally, because Dick thought that he would have a heart attack if he ever saw Superboy actually dance, but it looked like Dinah might as well have been doing just that. She probably felt like she was training a Kindergartener and, despite the living weapon spiel, she pretty much was.

"I said to channel your anger, not to increase it," the woman instructed as she dodged another uncoordinated charge from her roaring opponent. "And you're going to waste a lot of energy yelling like that."

"You're just a regular human," Superboy spat. "I can still beat you!"

"Then why haven't you?" Dinah challenged as Dick finally stepped into the light, turning to lean against the wall with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. The heroine sidestepped Superboy again as she glanced at the youngest of the Bat family. "Hello, Robin," she greeted with a smile before turning her attention back to the fight, not that Dick doubted her attention had ever left. She balanced her weight into a light fighting stance, then grabbed Superboy's arm as he barrelled past and used his weight displacement to her advantage as she spun around and sent him crashing onto his chest. She stepped off the platform as the match shut down, only to pause and stare at Dick.

Dick was sick of getting stared at.

"Are you alright?" she asked. Dick was also sick of being asked that. Superboy opened his mouth to say something, but only grunted when he saw Dick and stormed away in favour of the couch.

Dick's smirk dropped. "Not entirely," he admitted. Dinah's eyebrows shot up and she changed her path in order to stand in front of him. She turned and leaned up against the wall beside the acrobat.

"And why is that?" asked the woman.

Dick sighed and ran his fingers through his bangs. "Just Batman," he said, before grimacing at the fact that he was even talking about his personal life at all. He decided to turn it down a notch when he continued. "He's been getting into my business more than usual."

Despite him not having said much, Dinah looked like she understood. Dick had to say that that quality of hers was probably why he admired her so much. "He is, is he? I told that man to leave you be," she scowled. Or, scowled as much as someone like Dinah could.

"Really?" Dick frowned. "What did you guys talk about?"

Dinah hesitated. It was clear that she wasn't willing to get in between the two of them, but it wasn't like she was spreading false information. If anything, she was helping each of them learn both sides of their stories. She leaned into Dick, glancing around the room, and Dick tallied that as another reason why he admired her. She kept privacy private. "Is there a reason for this sudden change of...heart?" she asked. "I mean, from overcoming your grief so quickly? I don't care what it is so long as it makes you healthy and happy, but Batman is...well," she sighed. "Batman is really something."

What should Dick actually tell her? How much could he reveal about Wally?

Where was Wally?

With a jolt, Dick pushed off of the wall and examined the room, Dinah thankfully remaining silent. No matter how hard Dick thought, though, he didn't think that he had seen Wally follow him to the mountain. "Sorry," he apologised. "I have to go."

"Go where?" Dinah asked immediately. "You just got here, and we have training."

"A friend," Dick said, anxiety gnawing at his gut. "I forgot to call a friend. I'll be back later. Is it okay if I miss part of training today?" he pleaded.

Dinah looked as if she were thinking about it but, if Dick were honest, she wasn't very convincing. She had already made up her mind the moment that Dick had asked to leave. "Yes," she agreed. "But at least tell Batman where you're going." Dick nodded, hardly bothering to even hear her words as he rushed out of the room.

Alone in the training arena, Dinah ran a hand down her face and sighed. "And at least make up a better excuse next time," she muttered.

Racing down the back hallway that led to the main garage doors of the cave, Dick cursed himself. He had gotten on his motorcycle and gone to the nearest zeta tube in Gotham that hadn't been the one in the Batcave, considering that Bruce would have been in the Batcave too if he wasn't headed for Wayne Enterprises, without even paying attention to Wally. Wally had proved the other day that ghosts could go through zeta tubes, but Dick didn't think that they could necessarily ride motorcycles.

A rush of air went past his ear once, then again a second later. "Robin!" Barry said, practically materialising in front of Dick. "Hi!"

"Uh, hi," Dick greeted, distracted. "Sorry, I'm kind of in a rush," he said.

"Oh!" Barry exclaimed apologetically. "Want me to give you a lift? Where are you off to?"

"No, it's okay," reassured the acrobat, internally aching to leave. Barry, though usually as oblivious to social cues as the next speedster, actually seemed to take the hint.

"Aw, okay," he said. "But if you ever need me, you can call, alright? Oh, and before you leave," he continued just as Dick began bouncing on the balls of his feet, "Batman was looking for you."

Dick nodded but, once more, hardly listened, already shooting off again for the mountain's exit. Thankfully, by the time Barry had disappeared, he really didn't have to go far as a blob of red hair floated casually through the door that separated the hall from the garage. "Dick!" Wally exclaimed, and Dick thought that he was about to start getting tired of speedster enthusiasm. "Did you know that I can't go through any natural raw materials? I just tried going through the stone of the mountain and hit my head."

"Wally," Dick breathed. He didn't say anything more, only grinned as Wally rambled about how unfair it was that he couldn't go through the stone of the mountain even when he was transparent. In fact, Wally literally didn't stop to breathe, probably because he didn't need to, and if Wally had been alive then Dick would have remembered that speedsters tended to do that in order to drown out their own thoughts. But Wally wasn't alive. Therefore, Dick wasn't really thinking about that as they walked away.

Bruce was, though. Well, about Wally in general, really.

Bruce knew that Dick had gone to the mountain. Where else would he have gone on a Saturday morning? The only other friend that Dick had was Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon's daughter, but he wouldn't have taken the R-Cycle if he had been headed there. Plus, the girl hadn't told Dick where she lived, and as much as Bruce hadn't exactly taught Dick about how to pick up ladies, Bruce figured that the boy was competent enough with people to know that conveniently knowing their address wasn't a good place to start.

Not to mention that Black Canary had scheduled a group training session that day. That was where he had been headed until he had run into Flash, who had zoomed past him once before turning around and running straight back. "Batman!" the speedster had exclaimed. "Do we have any missions for the kiddies today? Can I brief them?"

"No," Bruce had said lowly, making sure to adjust his voice. Sometimes, the low growl really was annoying. If he were honest, it was probably why he didn't speak as much as he did outside of costume. Low growls tended to hurt quite a bit after a while.

"Aw man," Flash had groaned. "What about later? Can I brief them later?"

"No," repeated Bruce.

"I really think they should go on an actual fighting mission for once, though," Flash had continued. "I mean, they always screw up covert, anyway."

That wasn't true, and Bruce had wanted to say that, but as much as he liked the truth, he valued his teammate's mental health more. How could he carry out a mission with a wounded soldier? Bruce didn't care for how emotionally vulnerable the Allen and West families were, but it wasn't his place to train them. He'd just have to deal with it.

Because since Wally had gone, covert missions had actually gone according to schedule. But, in Flash's mind, in Barry's mind, Wally was simply 'absent', and the team was how it had always been.

The team wasn't emotionally damaged. The team wasn't distant. The team wasn't so unmotivated that they responded to orders without banter, because it wasn't as if an entire key part of their conversation was missing. That was Barry's mindset.

Barry refused to move on.

In a weird, twisted sort of way, the man that was antithesis to everything Batman was reminded Bruce of himself. That caused Dick's previous words to come back to mind, and he fought a grimace.

"No," he had said again, moving to go around the man.

"Jeez, Bats, you're no fun. You've got to let them have the spotlight at some point. What are you doing here, anyway? Briefing isn't for a few hours," Flash had resigned, hands on his waist as he spaced his feet apart, as if he could make himself into a wall large enough to prevent the Batman from pushing past.

Bruce had decided to be honest, because if Flash could do anything, it was to physically find someone in a short amount of time. "Robin," he said monotonously, glancing pointedly over the man's shoulder to show that he desired to continue his search for said boy.

Flash had looked like he wanted to prod for more information, but who he was talking to must have finally occurred to him, because he went back to beaming bright and clear. "I'll let him know if I see him, then," he said, before waving and running off too fast for his 'See ya!' to be heard until he was already gone.

Bruce hadn't even tried saying that he didn't necessarily want Dick to know that he was looking for him. Even if he could catch up with the speedster, though, it only took a few seconds for Bruce to know that Flash had already done the deed.

That was because he actually heard the man tell Dick that he was being searched for. Surprised, Bruce instinctively glued himself to the wall behind the corner of the hall where the voices of Flash and Dick were drifting from. He didn't hear Flash for long, though, and Dick didn't talk much until a gust of wind from Flash's running steps ruffled Bruce's cape.

He was about to reveal himself, though he wasn't particularly great with words when it got down to serious conversations between him and his partner, when something made him stop.

That something happened to be the one name that Bruce had unintentionally blamed as the source of his problems.

"Wally," Dick said quietly from behind the corner, and Bruce watched as the boy's shadow against the opposite wall got smaller and smaller as his footsteps drew further and further away.

It was likely that Dick happened to think of Wally after seeing Flash, but after his strange change of moods and everything that had happened...

Well, Bruce didn't believe in coincidences.

There could have been only one explanation. But he thought that he had better check back with Black Canary later, if only to tell her that Dick wouldn't be going to training for a while.


	5. Chapter 5

**Wally refers to Bruce as Batman for a bit in this chapter, despite the fact that he knows Batman's name is Bruce. This is due to the fact that in that passage, he is literally talking about** ** _Batman,_** **the superhero/figure/mentor/symbol, not Bruce, the person (hopefully that also answers a question I got in a review about a similar situation earlier. Sorry!)**

 **I like and don't like this chapter at the same time? But hey, there's foreshadowing!**

 **Also, NOTE: There's a flashback in this, and it's inserted in the middle of what's present-day, before melting again into present day. I don't italicise or bold or such and such for flashbacks. It's literally in the middle of a paragraph. So just keep on the look out for that and realise that after it explains present-day events, the rest of the chapter is occurring in present-day.**

 **I hope you guys enjoy, and don't be afraid to leave me a few words! I get overjoyed at the sight of them. c:**

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Wally knew that Barry Allen had forgotten about him. He knew it. He'd known it since he had died.

The man had returned to normal. All bright and sunshine, his and Aunt Iris' home, where Wally used to live and the place he'd haunted in his first few months as a ghost, was never silent. There was music if there was no talking, there was dancing if there was no singing, always with food on the plate and bright lights from the ceiling, even on the sunniest of days. Hell, exactly one month after Wally had died, and he knew because he had been counting on the calendar in the kitchen, Iris had taken Barry on a picnic.

Was that all that Wally had amounted to? Picnics, in the very field that he and Barry used to run at night in the early stages of his training as Kid Flash?

Wally knew that Barry had forgotten about him, and that was frightening.

Wally had never known that he had done it throughout his life, but a year after meeting Dick, the two of them ages 11 and 13, Dick had pointed it out. It was remarkable how immature Dick always acted and how observant he really could be. He had told Wally, after a night spent patrolling together with Roy and all three of their mentors, that maybe they could spend some-

"-more time together," Dick had stated, and Wally had felt a bit awkward, the younger boy grabbing onto his sleeve like that outside of the zeta tube connecting to the Batcave. Batman, Barry, Green Arrow, and Roy had already gone through, and Wally was to go next. Dick was last in order to attach some-shiny-device-or-another to the zeta tube that was supposed to allow him to recode, after he had gone through, the coordinates of the teleporter from the Batcave back to its original destination in Metropolis. "Just the two of us."

If that hadn't sounded suspicious coming from the prodigy of the World's-Greatest-Most-Paranoid-And-Busiest-Detective-In-The-World, Wally didn't know what did. "Uh, sure, man," he had answered uncomfortably. "I'm all for hanging out. But…why?"

It seemed to occur to Dick then how his words must have sounded, and he let go of Wally's sleeve with a cackle. "Because you're cool and all in a group, but I want to know what you're really like."

"What?" Wally had frowned. "I'm pretty sure you've got how I act down by now. Why should hanging out together make any difference?"

"Because then you won't keep trying to grab everyone's attention. It'll be only me, and there will be no one competing for my focus," answered Dick, as if Wally was totally supposed to know what that meant. Well, he didn't. Stupid birds. Dick must have noticed Wally's confusion, because he continued. "You're loud and silly so that you won't be forgotten, right?"

Wally had wanted to protest to that. Hearing it out loud was so much different from hearing it in his head. But there had been truth to Dick's words. There had been so much truth that Wally couldn't find it in himself to lie. He was a terrible liar, anyway. "I want to get to know the real you," Dick had said with a playful shove of Wally's shoulder. "And that means taking away all of the variables that get you acting like the class clown. It means making it so that you aren't always trying to be the centre of attention. You're not going to be forgotten, Wally. I'm pretty sure it's hard not to notice you, no matter how quiet you are."

Wally had to think hard about an answer to that statement. "Well, duh, you guys can't actually forget about me when I'm right there," he had reasoned. "I just…" Say it, Wally. Say it. Dick had already known everything just by guessing. What harm was there in a little more information? "I don't want to be ignored."

"No one does," Dick had shrugged, before offering a brilliant smile. "If you were ignored, I wouldn't be standing here. Now go away before we start a soap opera - Batman's gonna be pissed if we're late," he had said, shoving Wally under the zeta beam. Wally had appeared in the Batcave moments later and, after Dick had finally shown up, nothing more on the matter was ever said.

Still, Wally, for days afterward, had thought about what Dick had meant. Wally wasn't so naive as to think that no one in the world felt like Wally did, especially not about being ignored. But there was something there that Wally didn't believe Dick had understood. Something rooted deeply, so deeply that it stirred Wally's limbs into vibrating, kick started his heart into racing.

It probably could have been traced back to when Wally was younger, after his mother had walked out and before his father had been thrown into jail for drug abuse. Wally knew that he had gotten off good compared to the other kids in the situation that he was in. A kind CPS agent had said so, right after Rudolph West had been dragged off to rehab. He had an uncle and aunt close by, more than willing to take him in. He had never been physically hurt by his father, at least not badly or past normal, albeit a bit harsh, child discipline. There had never been physical, although somewhat mental, abuse in the West household. But Wally hadn't been much of a talker at that time, so he didn't blame that particular CPS agent for not considering an important factor.

Wally had never been abused. But he had always been neglected.

He hadn't wanted that to happen ever again. Especially not by Barry. As he was raised under Allen eyes, Wally could almost forget about that fear. At least, when he wasn't around Dick after Dick had given that short speech of his. Though a new personality had sprung from the ashes of his childhood in a vain attempt to ward away the possibility of his nightmares coming true, it was unintentional. He never truly feared being neglected by Barry or by Iris. He had been certain that he would never be ignored or forgotten again.

It took his death for Wally to find out that he had been wrong.

Even Dick forgot about him. Wally knew it. Dick didn't, but Wally did. When Wally first became visible to Dick, it was Wally that was the centre of Dick's world. Wally had never asked to be the centre of anything, he just didn't want to be so far in the distance that he wasn't seen. Still, once Wally gave Dick the happiness that Dick had lost, it wasn't uncommon for long periods of the day to go by where it was as if Wally didn't exist at all. That other day at the mountain with the team, for example. Once Artemis had sat down, all throughout the night, after the movie and during the jokes, it didn't look as if it had occurred to Dick that Wally was still around. That morning, Wally had been absent, testing to see if Dick would notice, and when he walked up to Dick in the late afternoon all that he got was a 'hi', as if Wally had been there the entire time.

After Dick had left Wally earlier that day on his R-Cycle, Wally had decided to take the zeta tube in the Batcave to the mountain because he had no clue where the one that Dick was headed for was located, but once he hopped beneath the beam, he had quickly figured out that not even zeta tubes knew that ghosts existed.

Fantastic, really. The last time that Wally had entered through a zeta tube was because Dick had been the one who had activated it, and Wally didn't think that Dick was getting back anytime soon to help his pal out.

He never knew that his hero would be Batman, of all people. No, Wally never knew that his hero would be _Bruce Wayne_. Gah, it was still weird to digest.

The man had just suddenly appeared. Wally figured it was from one of the many shady caverns that were more than abundant throughout the cave, but the redhead thought that Batman at least tried to be silent during missions. Nope, that was just how the man was. A bit freaky, in Wally's opinion. Batman would be a better suited assassin than crime fighter.

He had never taken the time to really get to know Batman. Hell, Wally had never taken the time to really look at Batman. He was always too intimidated by the towering man. Though Wally still got the nerves, despite the fact that he was on a different physical plane than the billionaire, he could credit himself with having more confidence around him than before. Enough confidence to stride up to the man and take a look at the papers that he was looking at.

Or, lack thereof.

The file on top of the desk where Bruce had sat down wasn't opened. In fact, Bruce wasn't even touching it. His elbows were on either side of the manila folder and one hand was tightly gripping his bangs away from his face. Startling Wally almost to the other side of the room, he suddenly groaned and slammed his hands down, shaking the desktop nestled a foot away. Bruce spun around and grabbed his costume, beginning to change as Wally forcefully trained his gaze on said computer.

The former speedster had never thought that he would ever get into Bruce Wayne's breathing space, let alone potentially watch the man strip. It felt like things were getting more freaky when he was dead than when he had been alive, and that was saying a lot.

Wally knew that Bruce was done when he spoke. "Batcomputer, deactivate lights," he commanded as the redhead turned around. The cave went dim, and Wally was still recovering from hearing the Batsuit speak in something other than a Clint Eastwood imitation when the man in question headed towards the zeta tube.

If that wasn't Wally's chance, nothing was. He had darted forward and stood uncomfortably close to Bruce's chest as the door of the phone booth was sealed shut and the light whisked the both of them away.

After having heard Bruce mention to Barry that he had been looking for Dick, Wally thought that he had a good idea as to why the man had groaned in the cave. In fact, that was what he had been trying to tell Dick when he had finally found the boy, but fate was no longer giving him the chance. The moment that the pair had stepped into the training arena, Black Canary (that amazing woman with her amazing body, wow, did Wally miss training with that, she made even his ass getting kicked look beautiful) wasted no time in directing the team into fighting groups. The first to go up was Dick, and Wally wasn't about to break Dick's concentration.

When Dick finally stepped back down after his spar with Artemis, however, was when Bruce decided to walk in, causing Dick to beeline to his room. That, in turn, made Wally feel that he had best keep his mouth shut about anything involving Dick's somewhat-adoptive father.

Instead, a new idea had taken root in his mind. An idea that had shoved Bruce's suspicious behaviour to the sidelines and was just itching at Wally's mouth, begging to be voiced. He eyed Dick as his best friend sat down on the covers of his bed, legs crossed, bangs gripped tightly over his forehead.

Wally didn't point out how similar the gesture was to Bruce.

He could feel his voice at the back of his throat and his lips already shaping the request. All he had to do was ask it. How hard could that be? Very hard, apparently. But the silence in the room was oppressive, and Wally wanted to do something. He wanted to move. He needed to take some sort of action.

"Sit down," Dick said. His voice sounded hoarse. Wally frowned.

"I can't. I go through furniture." Dick didn't answer, and Wally took a deep breath in an attempt to better force the words from his throat.

Come on.

It wasn't as if he were asking Dick to shoot Klarion's cat, god dammit.

"Can you tell Barry that I'm a ghost?" If Wally had still had superspeed, he thought that he probably would have rushed those words out too fast for Dick to hear. Thankfully, he didn't need to repeat them.

Dick looked at him as if he were insane. Maybe he was. "He wouldn't believe me," the acrobat deadpanned. "Would you, if Barry was a ghost?"

"Please," Wally begged, feeling as if his throat were constricting with something suspicious. "Just...try. All he needs to do is empty his mind to see me, right? To hear me? Just tell him to do that and I'll do the rest."

"It won't work," protested Dick. "I can't-"

"You can!" Wally exclaimed. His throat burned. "Dick, please. I can't, but if you can single-handedly throw the Joker into Arkham, you can convince-"

"I know you miss him," Dick interrupted. "I miss my parents too, Wally. But you have to-"

Wally narrowed his eyes. "It's not like that," he corrected.

"Then what is it like?" challenged the acrobat.

"I want him to feel guilty," Wally spat, and Dick's eyes widened in surprise. "He forgot about me, Dick!" the redhead said as his voice rose. He tried to keep it down, he really did, but then he realised that no one could hear him anyway. No matter how loudly he screamed, no one would ever hear him.

He didn't exist.

"He just forgot. Everything. The crimes we stopped together, raising me, taking me in after my dad went to prison, and then he doesn't even grieve when I die. He practically spits on my grave! He makes a point to go to every place that means something to me and laugh! He doesn't care about me. He never did!" the redhead shouted.

"So you want him to mourn for the rest of his life, do you?" Dick shouted back as Wally's hands curled into fists. God, was it frustrating, not even being able to hit something when he was mad. "You want him to cry himself to sleep every night? Because believe me, if he's anything like I was, he does. How can you be so stupid?"

Stupid. Right. Because that was all that Wally was. Stupid enough to get himself exploded before his high school diploma. He felt the tears stream down his face as he screamed into his fists. It was so unfair.

Was justice even real? Or were heroes only doomed to suffer in place of all the suffering that they stopped?

"I don't believe it," Wally mumbled tearfully.

"Then you're only making yourself suffer for something that isn't even true. How could you do that to yourself? To Barry's memory?" Dick demanded.

"You're acting like Barry's the one who died!"

"And what if he was?" asked Dick. Wally fell silent. "Your mother left you. Your father got what he deserved. They never really cared about you and you know it. You didn't grieve for them, don't pretend you did, you only grieved for yourself. And you should have. Hell, you should have grieved more. You should have kicked and screamed until they got the worst punishment possible for not giving you the childhood that you deserved. But Wally, they weren't the loving, caring parents that died in your average depressing backstory. You weren't the living one who thought that he'd lost the people he'd spent his life with. You're not the one alive, with family who is dead. What do you know about how a person mourns for their kid?"

"I'm not Barry's kid," Wally croaked. Damn Dick. Damn Dick for knowing too much about him.

"Maybe not to you, but to Barry you are," Dick said, standing up. "You know what I did after my parents died? I became Robin. I busted the guy who murdered them. I fight crime in their memory. What do you know about how people honour a memory?" he panted. "Barry already fights crime. You two were the sunny duo. The ones who skipped in every day and ate everyone's food and laughed during serious missions and joked about the most terrifying of all villains. Why would Barry cry in your memory? Your memory is fun. Barry doesn't laugh _at_ your memory, he laughs _for_ it."

"Why do you think you know more than me about the guy I grew up with? About my mentor? My partner?" demanded the redhead. "You didn't see him! You haven't spent every waking moment with him for the past two months!"

"No, I haven't seen him," Dick sighed, slumping again. Wally's fists uncurled at the sudden lack of energy radiating from his best friend's side of the argument. "And honestly, I'm so done with all of this negativity. I can find happiness for just a little while, and what happens? Bruce thinks I'm insane and better off being depressed, and you're convinced on nothing that the man who watched you during every waking moment for way longer than just two months wants to spit on your grave. Is everyone out of their minds? Maybe _I'm_ out of _my_ mind." Wally could only watch as Dick curled his head close to his knees, clawing at the hairs on the back of his neck. "Maybe I'm just seeing things. Hell, maybe you're not even real."

"You know that's not true," squeaked Wally. He cleared his throat in an attempt to dislodge the knot that had yet to unravel. Wally didn't want Dick to continue that train of thought, to protest Wally's claim, but Wally preferred that to the silence Dick left him with instead.


	6. Chapter 6

**This one is...a bit of an emotional mess. I can't seem to write angst without humour, or vice versa. It's much longer (over twice as long), though, and I hope it's still enjoyable!**

 **Let me know what you think, and thank you for showing interest in Chapter 6 of POV!**

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Dick didn't mention anything about the disastrous conversation from the mountain for days afterwards, and Wally didn't dare bring it up. Still, their relationship was tense, and the both of them knew that it wouldn't be too easy to ignore what words had been said and what had occurred. Wally, for his part, still wanted Barry to know that he was around, but for what he was unsure.

Did he still want Barry to feel guilty about abandoning him? But with all that time to mull over his thoughts, Wally didn't necessarily think that Barry had actually abandoned him anymore. Barry went to his nephew's grave once, but maybe Wally was just disappointed because he had been expecting more. He honestly didn't want Barry to cry or be upset. He never did. Yet, he wanted Barry to cry and be upset for _him_ , because Wally would have done the same in return.

Maybe Dick was right. Maybe Barry really was just honouring Wally's memory, not wanting to be sad for the teenager's sake. And, in a way, Wally knew that it was for the best. He might have been in more pain seeing Barry mourn over and over again, slip into a depression, for the boy that was right there.

It took a few days of thinking for Wally to realise, no matter how much Wally didn't want his favourite person in the world to be depressed, why he longed for the recognition of sadness at Wally's death.

Barry's happiness made it seem as if Wally had never made an effect on Barry's life. Being an actual ghost was a nightmare, but knowing that he had been a ghost for as long as he had lived? That was unbearable.

And selfish. Wally felt insanely selfish. How could he ever have thought that way of his uncle? How much pain was that man really in? And Wally couldn't do anything to heal that pain. He could do nothing but stand and watch the man go about his life, believing that Wally really was gone, not knowing that Wally still was with him.

Amidst all his thoughts of Barry, Wally discovered an important function in being a ghost. Because he had no superspeed, he could never go places very fast. In fact, finding Dick from Barry's house was only because he had followed Barry to the Watchtower, followed Batman to the Batcave, and finally followed Dick to school. However, if he thought about the place that he wanted to go hard enough, if he had enough longing to go there, sometimes he actually did. The first time it had happened, Wally had freaked Dick out by disappearing in the middle of the acrobat's rant about the American education system, but it was a pretty neat trick once he got the hang of it. At least being a ghost had some benefits.

He used the skill to switch back and forth between Barry and Dick's presences. He wanted to tell himself that he stayed with Dick most of the time, despite the often tense atmosphere, but he would be lying. He felt something obligatory in watching Barry. As if it were something that he were meant to do. Though he was mostly with Dick during the daytime, when Dick got the brief amounts of sleep that he did, Wally wasted no time in switching over to the Allen household.

Sometimes, all that happened was Wally watching Barry sleep. Other times, Barry was staying late in the forensics labs at the CCPD, ripping himself apart over some evidence that he couldn't sort out. Those times were especially excruciating, because while Barry was too tired to pick up on all the fine details, Wally could easily see what he was missing to solve a case and was unable to let the man know. Other nights, it was neither of those instances. Barry would be half asleep and half awake. He would lie in bed, Iris snoring softly beside him, with his eyes bloodshot and trained on the ceiling.

Wally had no way of knowing what events had occurred during the day for Barry to look such a way. He had been busy at Wayne manor. But on those nights, like the one that was happening at that moment, Barry would lazily toss the sheets to the side and stumble to the bathroom. Wally had enough decency to wait outside the door and, though he'd try not to listen because listening to someone go to the bathroom was plain awkward, he would hear Barry sigh. Barry would turn on the faucet, splash what was probably his face, turn it off, turn it on again, turn it off, and then there would be silence. If the man was in there for over an hour, Wally would tentatively inch his way through the door, only to find Barry with his arms around his knees and sitting against the bathtub, fast asleep.

Wally would be there with him until Aunt Iris knocked on the door at sunrise and woke Barry up. She seemed to guess every time that the man had been in there for a while, but she never said anything. She only walked downstairs and called the department, letting them know that Barry would be late for work.

When Wally appeared back in Dick's bedroom, the acrobat was changing. Wally was grateful for the fact that Dick seemed to wear leggings (or something like that - spandex? Man-dex?) beneath everything, so seeing his friend half shirtless wasn't really a problem. Dick adjusted his collar and pulled on his blazer without looking at the ghost. "So, where do you keep disappearing off to?" he asked conversationally, sitting down on his bed to pull on his socks.

Wally didn't think there was any point in denying the truth. Where else would he go? "Home," he answered. Dick nodded, pulling on his socks and moving in front of the mirror to adjust his tie. Wally wrinkled his nose. It must have been a pain in the ass to wear a tie every day, especially for someone who grew up in a circus where he had probably been 50% naked 90% of the time. Dick squirted some hair gel onto his hands and rubbed it over his fingers absentmindedly.

Then, with a dramatic sweep of his fingers through his bangs, he spun around and gave a nervous, albeit attempting to be brilliant, smile. "I want go with you," he declared.

"I usually go while Barry's sleeping," Wally deadpanned. Not to rain on Dick's parade, but he didn't think anyone would appreciate the Boy Wonder watching them sleep.

Dick rolled his eyes and dragged the rest of the gel through his hair. His smile grew less nervous at Wally's apparently amusing response. "No, smartass. I mean I'll go with you to your house after school."

Wally's eyes widened thoughtfully. "Think Batsy'll let you?" he asked.

Dick snorted. "No, but when'd that ever stop me? He hasn't been paying attention to where I go lately, anyway. Al says he's just giving me space, but I really just think that he doesn't know how to apologise and went back into hibernation."

"Bats hibernate?" asked Wally. Dick only shrugged and glanced at the time, before proceeding to scramble his things into his backpack.

"Besides," Dick said as he shoved his binder into his bag and zipped it up, slinging the hefty thing onto his back. "I kind of...owe it to you." Wally didn't say anything, urging Dick on. "I mean, I sort of blew up on you the other day and it wasn't really any of my business. And...I guess it could work? It's not like Batman has a file on ghost properties, but we'll never know if we don't try."

When Dick glanced up at him, it was to Wally's grin, and it felt as if the room finally released the breath that it had been holding for the past week. "See? This is why you're my best pal."

Wally was more than happy to be the reason that Dick practically skipped into the car that morning under Alfred's startled eye.

* * *

The nerves kicked in when Wally and Dick found that there was no one home. There was a reasonable explanation: Iris was a reporter with unspecified hours and Barry was still at the lab. The nerves weren't for not knowing where his guardians were, however. The nerves were for the realisation that what they were about to do could either end spectacularly well, or spectacularly bad.

"Hi," Dick said kindly to the front desk of the Central City Police Department. He had his sunglasses on and had changed in the alleyway of the Central-Gotham zeta tube, trading out his private school uniform for a green hoodie and black sweatpants. He had made sure to shake his hair out from its gelled back look to give himself easy recognisability for Barry, too. With the amount of identities that Dick had, Wally wouldn't be surprised if the smallest change caused him to be unrecognisable. The woman behind the front desk looked up lazily, her eyes scanning with semi-interest over Dick's appearance. His windswept hair and baggy clothes made him look like any apathetic teenager, but the glasses must have passed him off for more of the rebellious side. Honestly, Wally was only thankful that it was sunny outside so that Dick actually had an excuse to be wearing them.

"Hello," she said, propping her elbows on the desk. "How may I help you?"

"I'm here to see Barry. Barry Allen," said Dick as the secretary glanced over to her computer screen and began to type in the name. "Barry. B-A-R-R-Y. Allen. A-L-L-E-N."

"Forensics?" the secretary asked suspiciously. "I thought you were talking about someone in interrogation. Is Mr. Allen your father?"

"Not exactly," Dick said. "Could you please let him know that Rob is here to see him?"

The woman held his gaze for a moment before writing down the name on a sticky note. "Alright, son. Just sit over there. Don't expect him to be out immediately, though."

"Thank you," replied Dick as he went to sit in one of the chairs in front of the main door.

Wally couldn't stand still. He buzzed around constantly, pacing right in front of Dick's nose as the boy sat absolutely still, probably trying to block Wally's actions from his mind. It didn't seem to be working, but Wally mentally cheered at the fact that Dick couldn't exactly complain when no one else would have been able to see what he was complaining about.

Fortunately, it didn't take long for Barry to appear. In fact, Wally would have bet that it took two minutes tops for the man to go skidding around the corner, arriving at a screeching stop in front of Dick. The waiting room stared, but Barry gave them no mind. "Rob!" the man exclaimed. Dick got up and laughed as Barry gave him a hug. Wally would never admit that he burned with jealousy, and his gut dropped painfully. He really did miss getting hugs from anyone, let alone from the Flash, his mentor and partner and uncle. "What'cha doing here, kiddo?"

"I actually need to talk to you about something," Dick chuckled nervously. He made a point to quickly glance about the room, too quick for normal eyes to promptly catch, but definitely slow enough for the Flash. Barry sobered up quickly, nodding, though he didn't hide his confusion.

"Well, you're right on time. I was just about to head out for the day. Want to walk with me for a second? I just need to grab my things and we'll be out of here in no time," the man said.

Dick agreed and the two of them began walking down the hall, Dick with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his eyes trained on the ground, most likely to ignore the way that Wally dragged himself between them. Wally ached for Barry to just go faster. Get outside. It would only take a few minutes for Dick to tell Barry about Wally's existence, right? Then Barry would be able to see him and everything would be okay.

Right?

"So, how's your dad been doing?" Barry asked as they turned into the lab. Dick hesitated for a split second while Wally strode in, until Barry reassured him that he was fine to be in there as long as he stuck by the speedster.

"He's been okay," Dick answered absentmindedly. Wally knew that Barry had said 'dad' because anything specific would have been too much of an indicator as to Dick's identity, either as Robin or as Dick Grayson, but Wally couldn't help but want to correct his mentor himself. Probably because Dick had done it so much to Wally that he couldn't help it.

"Did you ever get to know why he was looking for you?" pressed the hero.

"Uh, yeah. Just something that happened at home. No biggy," reassured Dick, though by the look on Barry's face, the answer wasn't very comforting.

"So you're not here about any of that?"

"Nope."

At least Barry could take a hint, and they were silent as Barry picked up his jacket and began to organise the files and slides on his desk, picking up a few papers and sealing them into a folder that he put into a drawer.

"Wait," Wally said loudly, though only Dick paused in his actions. "That file. The one on his desk, right there," the redhead said, pointing to the file in question that lay beside Barry's microscope. "Tell him that the numbers are messages." At least Wally would be able to help Barry get more sleep. Working too much was definitely unhealthy.

"What?" Dick hissed, confused.

"Just do it," pleaded Wally.

"Uh," said Dick loudly, prompting Barry's attention as the man stopping in his rifling. "The-"

"Willmorth Case," Wally said.

"-Willmorth Case," Dick continued in a lower voice, causing Barry to frown. "The numbers in the file. They're messages."

"What?" Barry exclaimed after a moment, flipping open the folder and staring at the report. "You mean the numbers painted on the walls of the robbed houses? How did you know that?"

Dick only gave him a raised eyebrow, and Barry didn't pursue Dick's knowledge of the information any further. "Why didn't you tell the detectives? I'm just supposed to collect the evidence, not piece it together."

Dick shrugged. "They would have questioned me more than you," he responded.

There was a moment where Barry slowly flipped through the pictures in the stabled papers, before he gave a great smile that had Dick blinking back puzzlement. "Yes!" he cheered in success, grabbing the papers and glancing up to a man in a badge on the other side of the room, speaking to a different forensics personnel in a white lab jacket. The man wasted no time in ditching Dick and racing over to the uniform.

"What was that for?" Dick mumbled, pretending to be occupied with his phone.

"He's been killing himself over that case for a few nights now. He always wants to crack the hard cases, especially the parts that don't have anything to do with forensics," elaborated Wally.

Dick smiled at that, though Wally didn't really know why. Barry was back in no time with an avid expression and a pat on Dick's shoulder. Wally was relieved to practically feel the change in Barry's posture, as if something large and burdening had been lifted from his back. "Thanks, Kid," he said.

Dick's eyebrows furrowed at the nickname and, that time, Wally knew why. The redhead had normally been the one to help Barry on cases, after all. Even if unintentionally, he felt a rush of pride seep through him, the same pride that surfaced when Flash congratulated him on a job well done. It were almost as if Barry were talking to him instead of Dick. "I hate being a medium," Dick muttered. Barry didn't hear him.

Barry looked as if he were bursting with questions by the time the two (three) of them stepped onto the sidewalk outside of the CCPD. "Okay, spill," he promptly demanded. Dick sighed.

"Not here."

Without waiting for a protest, Barry took Dick by the arm and rounded the corner into an alleyway. Wally groaned as the two disappeared in a flash of light.

Well, whatever. Barry may have had superspeed, but Wally had teleportation.

Wally appeared in front of the living room couch, his knee just barely through the coffee table, right as Barry unlocked the front door. Dick looked past the man to blink in surprise at Wally's presence, but otherwise made no comment as Barry kicked the door closed. Barry turned to look at Dick expectantly.

"Relax, it's not bad news," Dick said. Barry sighed in relief and slumped as he made his way to the kitchen.

"I hope not. I could use a lot less of that," he mumbled, and Wally felt guilty for having died. Out of all emotions concerning his death, Wally had never thought that one of them would be guilt. "Do you want anything? Cookies? Water? Waffles?"

"Interesting assortment," quipped Dick. "But I'm good. Thanks."

Barry shrugged and grabbed a few cookies from the counter. He was almost done with the first one by the time he had crossed the kitchen and living room to sit beside Dick on the couch. Wally stood in front of them, on the opposite side of the coffee table, with his hands on his hips. He felt sort of bad for staring so intensely at Dick considering that Barry was doing the same, but there was really nowhere else worth looking with what was about to happen.

"This is going to sound insane. Just hear me out, alright? I'm not crazy," said Dick, and Wally couldn't help but remark that he pleaded sanity despite what he had said during their earlier argument at the mountain. It brought that argument to mind and he almost missed what Dick asked next. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"What?" was Barry's hesitant answer. He munched slower through his second cookie and set the rest on the table. Dick waited for the man to swallow. "Uh, not really? You're going to find very few scientists who believe in the supernatural, bud."

"You're a guy with superspeed who fights crime alongside a bunch of aliens and you don't believe in ghosts?" Dick retorted.

"But all of that can be explained with science," Barry pointed out. "Ghosts...can't."

"They better be, or else you're going to question everything you've built your life on," muttered Dick. That time, Barry heard him.

"Seriously, Robin. What are you going on about?" demanded the man, a frown having inched its way onto his face. Dick took a moment to stare at the new expression, and Wally figured that his best friend hadn't seen Barry without his smile very often.

"Hurry up," Wally urged. Dick shot him a glare.

"This is harder than it looks," he told Wally. Barry whipped his head to look at Wally but, seeing nothing, only increased his frown.

Before Barry could say more, Dick took a deep breath. "Wally's a ghost. And I can see him. And he's in this room."

It really couldn't have gone much more awkwardly than it did. Wally stood there, expectant and hopeful, darting glances at Dick who looked like he wanted nothing more than to crawl six feet underground and stay there. Wally didn't blame his best friend. The way that Barry was staring at him made Wally feel crazy, too. If the redhead didn't keep accidentally walking through the coffee table in anticipation, he might have doubted his own existence as a ghost.

"Did you go on patrol with Batman last night?" was the first thing that Barry asked.

Dick narrowed his eyes. "What?"

Barry reached for his communicator. "I think you need to get to the Batcave. You were probably sprayed with fear gas. I heard some rumours about what happened last time. That stuff is nasty-"

"No!" Dick exclaimed, grasping Barry's slowly crawling wrist. The speedster stopped and looked at the young teenager in concern, which only caused Dick to bristle. "I'm fine. Trust me, I'd know if I got infected with fear gas, and I've been able to see Wally for weeks now. He's been asking me to tell you, but I knew you'd just think I'm insane." He set his jaw and purposely prevented his eyes from straying towards Wally, but his words were clear enough.

"If I'm such an inconvenience, why'd you help me?" Wally countered. Dick didn't answer, but his grip on Barry's wrist tightened.

" _Richard_ , you need _help_ ," Barry insisted, yanking his hand away from the younger boy's grasp. "Are you telling me that the reason you've been all happy is because you think you've been speaking with...with _Wally_?" The man stuttered at the name, and Wally winced.

"I don't _think_ I have, I _know_ I have," snapped Dick. Barry abruptly stood up, causing Wally to stumble back a step. The one thing that would probably crush his memory of Barry forever would be if he accidentally went through the man. He had to maintain a sense of normalcy somehow, after all.

"Kiddo, if you could always see Wally, why not before? You were depressed," the speedster continued cautiously. "Have you ever thought that maybe you're just...seeing him to get over your depression? A mechanism of your mind to deal with grief? A trick?"

"I live in _Gotham_!" Dick exclaimed in frustration. "I've dealt with enough crazies and illusions and depression and grief and insane inmates to know that I'm not one of them!"

"Has Batman taken you to see a therapist?"

"Yes! I've been seeing a therapist ever since Wally's death, without fail. Stop trying to discredit me and just listen for a second!"

" _Dick,_ things like this have happened before. Has he said anything unlike how he...used to be? Look, I know you don't create illusions on purpose. It's just a-"

"Wally's standing right behind you, listening to everything you're saying. If you think you can trick me into thinking that Wally's not real, try tricking Wally into thinking that he's not real. See how far you get with that."

"God, stop mentioning him!" Barry finally shouted, causing Dick's prepared response to die on his lips. Barry fell back onto the couch defeated, palms pressed against his forehead. Wally hurt. From where, he didn't know. He had no chest and he had no heart, but he had a soul and he had feeling and all he knew was that it hurt. Barry's words hurt. "He's gone. Jesus, Dick, he's gone and he's always going to be gone! We can't ever get him back. He's not a ghost, he's not alive, he's not here. No matter what we want ourselves to believe."

There was silence as Barry stared at his toes. Dick wasted no time in lifting his own head to stare helplessly at Wally, who could only bite his fingers and squeeze his eyes shut. What could he, as a transparent spirit, possibly do to convince Barry that he was real?

What did they do in the movies?

"Tell him...," the redhead began as Dick looked on quizzically. "Tell him that I remember when Barry came to my house a couple years ago. I was still living with my dad. My dad answered the door and Barry was angry about something, but I don't know what and I still don't know what."

Dick nodded and began repeating the tale. After a moment, Wally went on. "Barry came in and slammed his fists on the counter, ranting, while I was watching from behind the bars of the stairs. I had been about to go down and get food, but I was nervous because at that point people were actually talking down there and I wasn't used to loud noises.

"Barry wanted some food and my dad told him to get whatever he wanted. My dad went back to the couch as he began pulling the weirdest pieces of food from the fridge because we've always had a bunch of random snacks but never full, actual meals. Unless they were microwaveable. And then Barry walked into the living room and started ranting about how bad of a mess it was and that my aunt was going to be over later and they should at least try to clean it up. He said it looked like my dad lived in a dump, and I remember that especially because I'd always thought that it had looked normal. After a while, I remember going back upstairs to wait until everyone left, but an hour later I inched back down because I had heard yelling and screaming.

"Barry had found something in the bathroom. It was heroin, but I didn't know that at the time, I just knew that it was my dad's private things that I wasn't allowed to go near and that's why I was never allowed to go into that bathroom. And Barry shouted for a minute and then went silent and concerned and cautious and then finally, finally, he had asked about me.

"I had never really talked to Barry before then. At first, he tried to be friends with me, but when I tried to make friends with him my dad always looked like he disapproved and I never wanted to disapprove my dad. I mean, my dad never touched me or anything, but that was kind of the problem. He never acknowledged me at all. Barry did, which was why I got so attached to him, but I thought it obligatory that I should care about my dad more than Barry, so I hid from Barry until Barry eventually figured that I just didn't like him and left me alone.

"That was years before then. I never talked or even let Barry look at me until then, but when he asked about me is when I got so surprised that I missed a step on the stairs and stumbled. I didn't fall all the way down, but I made enough noise that he looked up and saw me. He must have seen something that he didn't like, because he looked back at my dad with more anger than I had ever seen him with."

Throughout the story, Barry had gone frozen and his fingers had only started gripping tighter into his hair. "Then he marched up the stairs, and I thought Barry was angry at me so I got really, really scared. He grabbed me by the arm, but not tight enough to hurt, and practically dragged me out of there. I ate dinner for the first time with him and Iris. I had to go back for the night, but the next morning some police officers came over and inspected the place and it was pretty bad, like one of those drug dens, but I didn't think so at the time. The police thought it was pretty bad, though, because they let me stay with Barry after that and I kind of just never left." Wally felt a little embarrassed to have gotten so carried away, but he had figured that the more details, the better. Apparently so, because when Barry lifted his head, he was ghastly white.

"How did you know that?" he demanded of Dick.

Dick stared ahead with a carefully concealing blank expression. "I didn't," he said, pointing to where Wally stood. "Wally did."

Barry turned his head to look at where Wally was and, for just a second, the redhead felt like Barry was actually looking at him. But then the second passed and Barry went back to looking straight through.

But Wally was on a roll. "When I asked what my name should be for becoming Kid Flash, he said that I should be Baby Chick, because I was all yellow and you, Robin, were kind of like my role model for being a sidekick while Flash was my hero. He said that I should just combine both of my role models and keep the bird sidekick theme going."

"You told Wally that he should be called Baby Chick?" Dick asked Barry. Barry, amidst the cluster of emotions he was being assaulted with, actually gave out a breath that could have meant amusement.

"I-wow," Barry nervously breathed. "Uhm, is it possible- I mean, how do you- what can I do to- y'know, I want to be able to see him," he said shakily, wiping his palms off on his jeans.

Wally whooped, jumping up and pumping his fist into the air as he began to cheer. "Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Dick, yes! God, I love you, yes, yes, yes! He knows I'm here. He knows I'm real! It's my freaking birthday!"

Dick decided not to respond to Wally's obvious source of celebration in favour of relieving Barry's confusion. "You have to empty your mind," he said simply.

"'Empty my mind'?" Barry echoed. "How do I do that? I'm a speedster, it's pretty much impossible for me to go thoughtless." Unfortunately, Wally heard that and promptly sobered up.

"Well, we can still zone out," he protested.

Dick had to think about that for a moment. "I really don't know what having a hyperactive mind is like," he said slowly. "It's hard for me to imagine it. You just," he paused for a moment, struggling for the right words. "Don't think about anything? Stare at the wall and let yourself go blank. Zone out."

Barry scratched the back of his head, looking conflicted on how to take that information, but eventually nodded and did exactly as Dick said. He stared at the wall. Dick didn't dare move, didn't dare breathe, but he nodded at Wally. The redhead took the hint and began talking.

"Lalalala, what to say, what to say. Uhm, well, you should really get more sleep? Barry, I mean, not you, Dick. Well, I take that back. You should get some more sleep, too. Actually, everyone in the hero community needs to get more sleep. I need more sleep. I need to be physically capable of getting more sleep. Do you know the weirdest part about being a spirit? You don't sleep. You know why that's weird? Everything just feels like one long day. You said it's been a few weeks. It doesn't feel like weeks. At all. And months? Psh, it hasn't felt like months, either. It feels like the most dramatic day in the day of all days. It's like a soap opera season. Everything in one long day where everyone cries in the end and the same dramatic music plays every episode," Wally rambled.

'You watch soap operas?' Dick mouthed.

"I deny the fact that I compared not sleeping to a soap opera. Me? Soap operas? Nah. Aunt Iris watches them all the time. She denies it, but we all know that she does. Unlike me. I deny it, but we all know that I don't. That I don't watch them, I mean. Not that I don't deny watching them. Because I do deny watching them. Not deny as in to say something that's true is false, but deny as in it never happened. You know what? I should get off the topic of soap operas. Do you know what the Batcave looks like? It's a freaking museum. There's a T-Rex. There is a life-sized model of a green T-Rex in the Batcave and I have no idea why it's there. I don't think Rob knows why, either. It's just there. And it watches you. I feel like it's watching me and that's weird because a) I'm dead and b) it's dead. Then again, if I've learned one thing, it's that things that are supposed to be dead sometimes aren't really dead. Which might make zombies real. Which sucks. But that's okay, because I'm not solid, so if a zombie apocalypse happens then I'll be perfectly fine. In other words, the Walking Dead might be predicting the future, like the Mayans or something," continued the ghostly redhead as he began automatically pacing the carpet. He paused for a moment to glance at his uncle before continuing. Wally figured that Dick was pretty sick of hearing his voice ringing in his ears by the time the five minute mark had passed. He was honestly impressed with how long Barry was keeping his concentration. Wally knew from experience how short a speedster's attention span and patience could be.

Barry opened his eyes and shook his head, eyebrows creased in frustration. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" Wally exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "I just gave a speech that could rival Martin Luther King Jr. and it's 'nothing'?"

Barry stood up abruptly and turned to face Dick, who was perched on the arm of the couch. "It's kind of ridiculous," he said with an awkward, sad chuckle. "I don't understand how it's possible for that to happen. And what makes it so that a blank mind is able to hear ghosts?"

Dick seemed to have no explanation to that. At least, no explanation that a scientist of such level could possibly accept. "Ghosts," Barry muttered with a shake of his head. "If ghosts were real, more people would have seen them by now. If he was haunting me, I'd have seen him by now. Things that can accidentally happen occur more than once." Barry put one hand on his hip as if to steel himself, breathing in slowly. Neither Dick nor Wally moved, watching as the speedster seemed to be running through something in his mind. Slowly, the older hero turned to eye Dick.

"You-," he started, staring at the boy. "I've spent all this time finally getting my life back together, after the person who had become as close to my child as someone can possibly get without being biological _died_. He's _dead_. Gone. And then you come. You got yourself hit by some gas or some mental illness or depression, and then you come in here trying to drag me back. You brought my hopes up, and now I feel like the efforts I've taken throughout these months haven't mattered at all." His breaths turned heavy and shaky as he put one hand out, though for what was uncertain. Probably to steady himself.

Dick wisely said nothing. "You're just seeing things, Dick," Barry croaked. "And by _God_ , leave me and leave _Wallace_ out of it."

Then, with a swish of the wind, the man was gone.

"Shit," Wally groaned, sinking to the floor as Dick stared silently into his hands. "So close. We were so close." Dick slowly slid off of the arm of the couch as the redhead began pressing into his eyes with the heels of his hands. "He could have- why couldn't he have-"

"It wouldn't have worked," Dick interrupted as he kneeled beside his friend, his palms rubbing his thighs. He stayed a safe distance away, a foot, enough to give the illusion of comfort between them but not enough to make it apparent that Wally was only air. When Wally looked ready to protest, Dick continued. "Not just because he's a speedster, Wally. I knew it wouldn't work."

"Then why did you try?" Wally rasped. His throat felt tight. His chest felt tight. The realisation that victory had been only seconds away cut through him like rigid knives and he wanted to scream at how unfair it all was. He had come so close. So close that his very soul yearned for nothing more than to follow Barry and keep talking, keep begging for the man to hear him.

Dick bit his lip. "You wanted to so badly," he said. "But you can't tell someone to empty their mind. They would have to think about emptying their mind to empty it. And telling them why only adds that to their command, to use as motivation, but they're still thinking. It just isn't possible."

"I thought it would be easy," Wally mumbled into his hand. "You heard and saw me just by zoning out. No magic spells or genetic experiments or 'chosen one' deals. No demons eating souls. Just plain zoning out."

"But it's not," the acrobat mumbled back, and Wally nodded into his hands. "Nothing's ever easy."

Nothing was ever fair.

* * *

"Batman, you need to let this go. Wally's name isn't a curse word. It's perfectly logical for Robin to be reminded of him when he saw Barry," Black Canary sighed as she stood in front of the Watchtower's zeta tube to Mount Justice. She had been about to go through to start an impromptu training session with herself and Superboy, as he was rapidly proving that once a week team sessions weren't going to cut it, before being intercepted by the Dark Knight himself.

"I'm not looking for your opinion, I'm informing you," Bruce rumbled.

Black Canary didn't look happy. "And what will you do? Send him to another therapist?"

Bruce wouldn't tell her that he'd actually been contemplating that. The issue was that Dick's recent activity was getting suspicious. There was nothing else to it but that and a rancid, terrible gut feeling. The boy became easily distracted even when there was nothing apparent to Bruce that could possibly be distracting. He laughed when nothing was funny, after a long period of grief where he never laughed at the most funny of things. He changed moods suddenly and violently and Bruce might have blamed it on hormones if the tests hadn't said that Dick was perfectly fine.

Dick was reacting to things out of sync with what was actually happening. At least, what was actually happening in the real world.

And that was what worried Bruce the most. Dick was always in his own world. The only world where Bruce didn't know what was going on. What was happening in that world of his?

"What my partner and I do is no concern of yours," vaguely responded Bruce.

"That's the thing," Black Canary huffed, unconvinced and more than a little frustrated. "This may be your team on paper, Batman, but it's my team, too. It's Aqualad's team, too. It's Red Tornado's team, too. These kids see me and Red Tornado more than they see you or their families. As their trainer, therapist, and friend, I deserve and need to know what's going on with them."

To some extent, Black Canary had a valid point. But Black Canary was more oblivious to the situation than Bruce was, and Bruce knew little enough already. "Then until the situation is investigated, Robin is being put on leave from the team. Consider him away for family matters." To Bruce, that was correct enough. He was part of Dick's family, after all.

Black Canary glared. She even opened her mouth, daring to give a snappy retort, when the zeta tubes lit up and the Flash appeared. Bruce stiffened, unwilling to discuss what probably had a lot to do with the Flash's deceased nephew in front of the man himself. But it didn't seem as if Bruce's reluctance would be necessary. That was apparent by the way the speedster stumbled from underneath the beam and covered his face with his hands.

The light glistened off of the clear liquid coating them. Black Canary started, eyes widened. "Barry!" she exclaimed, rushing over to her teammate's shoulder. Bruce knew that the liquid could only be tears, by Barry's posture and by where his hands were, but it didn't fully register that the man was crying until he gave off a soft sob.

The happy-go-lucky, obnoxious speedster. Crying. That was an odd concept.

Bruce really hated it when people cried.

"What hap-," Black Canary tried to ask, but Barry abruptly cut her off by yanking his hands from his eyes and glaring at Bruce. Bruce, needless to say, was taken aback.

"Do you ever care enough about your partner to actually know what's going on?" Barry spat, and Bruce was starting to wish that Barry would go back to being loud and stupidly happy. He had thought that a serious Barry would have brought about a nice change, but it only made everything feel weird and strange. As if the balance and order of things were being misplaced and disorganised. "Do you ever think about Robin more than your dumb mission? Than your work?"

Bruce stood in silence as Barry went off on a short tirade, attracting the attention of Green Arrow and Aquaman, who were close by. Black Canary worriedly touched Barry's elbow, but he wasn't paying attention to anything but his own thoughts and the man in front of him. "No, you don't. You can't be bothered to even ask Robin if that kid's okay! Because no, he's not okay, in fact, he's ill."

"What are you talking about?" Bruce growled, already well on his way in blocking out the spat insults. Barry was ranting in his own anger. Of course Bruce paid Dick the due amount of attention. Dick came first. Didn't Barry know that?

Didn't Dick?

"He's sick, Batman!" Barry shouted. "He thinks he can _see ghosts_. He thinks that my _nephew_ is a _ghost_! He thinks that Wally is following him around, and he tried convincing me to believe the same!"

There was a shocked silence from the League members within earshot as those words seemed to be what put the expressive speedster under. A choked cry crawled up from Barry's throat and he shook his head violently. "Someone's needed to set you straight for a while. Take this as an example. Because take it from me, Batman, when Robin is suddenly yanked from you, you'll know everything that you did wrong that you never noticed before. And you'll never be able to fix them." With that, he raced back through the zeta beam, the machine almost too slow to react to Barry's fast moving particles. He was gone before the tube finished announcing his code.

Bruce wasn't far behind.

It wasn't hard to track where Dick was, considering it had been Barry who had delivered 'the news', as Bruce was going to vaguely call it, and the fact that Dick also had a tracker in his jean pocket. It took everything Bruce had not to kick down his teammate's back door when he arrived in full costume from a nearby alley. Instead, he restrained himself to lockpicking. When the backdoor of the Allen household swung open, it wasn't hard to find Dick sitting nearby on the floor.

His shoulders were hunched and he looked like he was concentrating on something. Something that wasn't Bruce. His palms were slowly rubbing his thighs, a nervous habit that Bruce had discovered while first training the boy, and his eyes were squeezed shut.

Bruce was going to call out for Robin until he saw Dick's glasses lying abandoned on the other side of the carpet. Why the boy had flung them there, Bruce had no idea, but the man was thankful in a way. At least it meant that he could call Dick by his real name and the boy would know that he was serious. "Dick," he growled.

Dick didn't look up, but his hands stopped moving. He mumbled something, but it was too quiet for Bruce to catch.

Bruce wasn't a conversationalist. He strode up to Dick and planted a palm firmly on the boy's shoulder, kneeling so that he could try to look his ward in the eyes. Dick's own eyes remained on the ground for a few more seconds, until Batman's patient position coaxed them upwards. Bruce's eyes narrowed behind the cowl. Time to cut straight to chase. "Where is Wally?"

Dick stared. He was searching for something and, for once, Bruce didn't know what. Dick was part of a world that Bruce had no place in, no knowledge about. After a few minutes of silence, the boy finally opened his mouth. "Behind you," he said quietly. Bruce didn't bother turning around.

"No, he's not," responded Bruce.

More silence. At first, Bruce wondered why Dick let the silence lapse so easily. He normally never did. In fact, Dick hated silence. But then it occurred to him that, according to Barry, Dick was hearing an extra voice that didn't exist for the rest of them. No longer existed. Dick nodded subtly to himself as his eyes narrowed, too. "You're so ready to just accept that he's gone."

"That's because he is."

Bruce wanted to think that he was being gentle when he coaxed Dick into a standing position, but he hadn't been gentle in so long that it was hard to remember the meaning. A person just didn't gently hospitalise the Joker or gently save Gotham from a crazy plant lady turning its citizens into trees. "You not wanting to believe that is the reason you think you're being haunted," Bruce continued.

"I'm not being haunted," Dick protested. "Haunt is an ugly word. He's lonely, Bruce."

The 'just like me' went unsaid, but it went unsaid in a language that Bruce could read. "Let's go home," Bruce said, and he even surprised himself with how quiet his words were. They were practically whispered, unnecessary in a house that held only the two of them.

Dick complied, but didn't agree. In fact, he said nothing at all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Woah! I got such a good response from last chapter! Thank you so much, guys. c: But I have to say, if last chapter broke your heart, you're in for a ride.**

 **Also, sorry for posting a day late. I swear I got on my computer last night and just passed out from exhaustion.**

 **I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

If he were in any other mood, Dick would have said that it was embarrassing to be back in Miss. Frances' office. As it was, though, Dick didn't have the emotional capacity for embarrassment. He only felt numb.

There was no way that Wally wasn't real. Wally had been walking right beside him as Bruce had led the both of them back to the Batcave. Wally was loitering beside Miss. Frances right at that moment, glaring at her with the heat of a thousand suns.

Wally was...only seen by Dick.

"Richard?" Miss. Frances's sickly sweet voice broke into Dick's thoughts. He didn't want to lift his head. He couldn't be bothered. From the corner of his eyes, though, Dick thought that she just looked curious. "Richard, your father told me that you've been seeing Wally?"

She said it so casually that Dick almost forgot that it was wrong. It was supposed to be wrong that he saw Wally. It was supposed to all be wrong. "He's not my father. He's Bruce."

"Bruce, then. Bruce told me that you've been seeing Wally."

Dick shrugged and offered no confirmation, nor denial.

"When did you first start seeing Wally?"

Dick wasn't sure if he should start answering the woman's questions. His eyes flickered to where Wally stood, looking so dejected and _re_ jected that Dick felt more lost than he had before. Did Wally want Dick to answer honestly? Did he want Dick to deny his existence? What did Wally want Dick to do?

What did Dick want to do?

Dick wanted to get answers. If Miss. Frances was convinced that she had them, well, that was the closest thing that Dick had. "A few weeks ago."

"How did he appear to you?"

Dick attempted to push Wally's presence from his mind. He had to ignore Wally. Just for right then. Ignore Wally so that it would make talking about him easier. Wally wouldn't mind. He understood. "Uh, here. First he kind of shouted something, but I don't remember what it was. It sounded like him, but I couldn't see him. I could only hear his jumbled up voice."

"Was that a few of our sessions ago? When you had thought you heard something, and I thought it was the construction workers?"

"Yeah."

She jotted something down. "When did you first see him?"

"English class."

"When Bruce said that you fainted?"

"Yeah."

Dick felt like he was getting nowhere.

"And where is he now?"

Dick automatically moved his eyes to where Wally was. The redhead's fists were tight and his face was all scrunched up. In all honesty, he looked like he was trying hard not to cry. Dick didn't want his best friend to cry. He had never even known that ghosts could cry. Despite not saying anything to the therapist, she acknowledged his glance. "Is he behind my chair?"

A pause. "Yeah."

"What is he doing?"

Dick was about to say something mundane, wanted to say something mundane and uncooperative and monotone. He wanted to only say that Wally was reading Miss. Frances's notes. But there was more to Wally than that, and he wanted to tell Wally that it was going to be alright, so why not kill two birds with one stone?

"He's trying not to cry."

Wally bit his lip at that. His fists uncurled immediately, as if he'd just realised what he had been doing, and one went to rub at the back of his neck. A nervous habit.

"Why do you think he would be crying?" Dick looked pointedly at Wally, waiting for an answer to give to Miss. Frances, waiting for an answer to give to himself, but Miss. Frances spoke before Wally could. "Don't ask him," she said. "Why do _you_ think he's crying?" She looked fascinated.

To Dick's surprise, Wally said nothing. "He's sad," the acrobat blurted.

He felt ridiculous.

"Why is he sad?"

Why was Wally sad? Dick frowned, staring at his best friend, but Wally didn't want to look him in the face. Miss. Frances shifted her body so that Dick's attention switched back to her. "His uncle doesn't know that he's still here. He can't see him."

"Wally's uncle rejected him?" Miss. Frances rephrased. Dick nodded. "Does Bruce reject you?"

How did the subject suddenly turn to him and Bruce? He stiffened and she must have noticed. "Take a deep breath, Richard," she soothed, voice grating in Dick's ears. "You don't have to answer completely if you don't want to. I only ask that whatever you do say is honest." She spoke slowly, as if Dick wouldn't understand if she didn't spell it out for him, and emphasised seemingly random words.

Did Bruce reject him? No. If Bruce rejected him, then he'd be neglected, and Dick was anything but neglected. Bruce made sure that he got good grades, went on patrol with him almost every night, was up to date in training, etc. Sure, that was all physical, never mental, but why should it have been any different? Bruce was his partner, not his father. It didn't matter if Dick longed for it to be the other way around.

But even partners offered a little comfort every once in awhile, didn't they?

When Dick didn't speak, Miss. Frances jotted something down into her notes. Wally barely grazed over them with his eyes. "Think about how Wally's emotions reflect in your own. Do Wally's emotions match yours? Do his actions express what you wish to do? We're about out of time, but just think about it, alright? Tell me what you come up with in our next session." She smiled brightly.

As Dick went to stand in the empty, echoing hallway outside of the office's waiting room, he thought that he could only be certain of two things:

1\. He wasn't crazy.

2\. The way that Wally stood there with his head low, silent, reminded Dick exactly of himself.

* * *

Tyler Billard, Gotham Academy's only English 1 teacher, had been wary of Dick Grayson before the boy's best friend had died. His job required him to treat the boy as he treated the rest of his students, but the pressure from the school staff to make sure the boy got the best grades that he could was immense, considering Bruce Wayne was the school's main funder. All year, the man had to make excuses in the grade book for any grade less than spectacular: English was his second language, he was absent during a review day, he went to the nurse's, he had a math competition coming up, etc. It was exhausting, to say the least.

So, hearing from Mr. Wayne's butler a few days ago that Dick was undergoing therapy treatment for "mental issues" made Tyler want to follow in the example of 75% of his Freshmen and not show up to class.

Sadly, he only had two personal days throughout the entire year. Tyler made a mental note to go on strike sometime in the future.

"How's Dick been?" Helen Adams asked, a teacher from the nearby science department. She had Dick as a student as well, but in her computer science class, which the boy seemed to have no problem in no matter how many days he was absent. Tyler reasoned that she probably had a dramatically lower stress rate associated with the boy because of it. It was second period, a free hour for the both of them, and Helen had made herself known by wandering into the room to steal Tyler's sandwich. He was fine with the food robbery. His wife seemed to pack him more food every year, despite the fact that he was getting older, not younger.

The aging man ran his fingers through his balding scalp, thinking of something positive and having something else come from his mouth instead. "Strange."

"How so?" pressed Helen. She was a new teacher. Tyler had taught her himself what felt like only a handful of years ago. But, as a new teacher, she was young and utterly convinced that she could help every student that she encountered. Tyler didn't even remember when he had held that same enthusiasm.

"I recently got a note from his psychiatrist, excusing him from the Romeo and Juliet final. I had to have Dick sit in the back of the class while everyone else was taking the test, and I honestly don't think it was for the best. They're trying to put less stress on him, but he makes it look like he has nothing to distract his mind with," the confused English major said. "And I don't think he likes that. He kept coming up to me, asking for some in-class essays to work on, but I don't want to give him To Kill A Mockingbird yet because I haven't even prepared the first week's essay prompts for it."

Helen thought about that, chewing Tyler's sandwich slowly. She swallowed. "He makes computer science look easy, even while kids walk out complaining that I give the most homework out of all of their classes. He doesn't look stressed at all in there. A little bored, if anything."

"No fidgeting? Hell, he looks downright paranoid in here, like something's about to jump him," Tyler exclaimed.

Helen shook her head. "No. He's pretty relaxed. It's gotten to the point that I don't really check his homework anymore, I just know that he always does it and he always does it right."

Tyler snorted in disbelief, leaning heavily against his palm. "What, are his 'mental issues' Shakespeare tragedy-induced trauma?"

The woman hummed lightly. "You're scary, but not that scary. What about PTSD? With what happened to his parents and all."

"Don't you think he would have showed symptoms earlier? That happened when he was nine, Helen. I don't think it would spark him to have a panic attack and suddenly faint in the middle of my lesson five years later."

"Dissociative Identity Disorder?" Helen suggested.

Tyler shrugged. "He's always acted like the same person to me. Maybe it's just anxiety or depression. It would be a problem if Mr. Wayne didn't take into serious account the health of his ward, and I wouldn't be surprised if that caused him to go overboard."

"Anxiety and depression are still serious illnesses, Mr. Billard," Helen warned. "It could be, but I don't really think so. I mean, you don't just turn anxiety or depression on and off."

Tyler sighed. In all honesty, he had no idea. Dick clearly didn't want to talk about it, and the English teacher was no counsellor. Helen would have been a great person to go to for personal problems, but Tyler Billard? No way. "Whatever it is, I don't think it's going away anytime soon. You try talking to him. Maybe you'll get somewhere and I can have some more time with what little hair I have left."

* * *

Dick hated the way that his teachers looked at him. His peers were bad enough, but his teachers? Their looks combined with his abnormal lack of homework let him know exactly what they knew, and it made him want to scream.

He wasn't sick. He was in perfect health. Why could no one see that? Yet, from one act of being a good friend, Dick had gone from well-respected both day and night to babied day and put on cave arrest at night. Bruce hadn't let him go on patrol since the episode at the Allen residence two weeks ago. He didn't even have enough homework to occupy him. He felt bored and trapped.

At least Wally felt the same way.

"Well, they don't know that you aren't actually grounded from all of your friends. Guess who's stuck to you for all time?" Wally said as Dick laid upside down on his bed, counting the seconds until he got too lightheaded to get back up.

"Alfred?" Dick suggested.

Wally huffed. "I'm so unappreciated," he whined, causing the acrobat to roll his eyes.

"Well, even if you're here, it's not like you can play videogames with me or anything," Dick said, arching his back so that he could scoot his palms as far as possible underneath his bed before he fell.

"I can talk," Wally protested. "Whadda 'bout gossip? Let's be the new Gossip Boys. I can be your hoarder of secrets."

"I'm not a gossiper, though."

"Then let's go explore somewhere! Do something!" Wally groaned. "Stop wasting your life away."

"What can I do? I'm grounded," deadpanned Dick.

Wally looked at him oddly. "You're being weirdly monotone and I don't like it."

Dick only shrugged as he rolled back into a cross legged position on his bed sheets.

Wally sighed. "Look, being grounded has never stopped you before. Maybe we can go visit Commissioner Gordon and see if he has any easy cases for you to crack. Something you can do that won't upset Batman too much. Or we can check out where the Batcave goes. Isn't it connected to the-"

"Abandoned underground Gotham subway station. That is, until we built a wall between there and the cave after Two-Face and his little band of misfits found the place on accident," responded Dick emotionlessly.

Running a hand down his face, Wally gave an exasperated noise and laid on the ground. When Wally first discovered that he could actually lay down in Dick's room, he had been ecstatic. That was, until Dick pointed out that the manor was made of stone and all it proved was that Wally still couldn't move through raw, unprocessed materials that weren't living. "I don't get it. Why aren't you more upset?" Dick asked.

"What?"

"You're supposed to be the emotional one who can't hide his feelings to save his life. Why aren't you still upset over what happened with Barry?" pressed Dick. Maybe he was being insensitive. He really didn't care at that point.

Wally narrowed his eyes at the ceiling, and Dick absently wondered if maybe he'd pushed too hard. "That's why I want to do something," said Wally. "I'm sick of grieving. I'm still upset over being dead, I don't want to add to the list. Seeing you moping around like life doesn't matter is only making me depressed again."

Dick let the silence fall heavily for a while after that, much to Wally's apparent disappointment. In Dick's opinion, though, the silence was a necessity. It was also the only thing he could ever be certain of in his life. With a sigh, he lifted his legs and dropped head first from the bed, his palms already on the ground and landing him on his feet. Wally stared at him with interest.

"Fine," Dick said quietly, tugging the legs of his jeans down from where they'd ridden up and bunched on his upper thighs. "Just let me get Robin."

Considering how long it took to sneak out of the manor in uniform (there were too many cameras around the base of the Batcave to sneak from there) and the sheer amount of stealth Dick had to employ while Wally skipped along beside him, Dick thought it unfair that Commissioner Gordon still had the audacity to look behind him for Batman thirty minutes later. Aware of who could be listening in, Dick said nothing about Batman not being present. "Robin?" Gordon asked in surprise. "Where's Batman?"

"What's going on here?" Dick redirected.

Wally went cross-eyed with how close he was to Gordon's face. "Advantages of being a ghost, number 1: You can be creepy without being creepy."

"I thought number 1 was being able to float through walls?" Dick whispered as Gordon sighed and turned to face the Bank of America's Gotham branch as it was barricaded by police forces. "Or maybe teleportation?"

"Being able to float through walls wore off when I found out that I can still crash face first into mountains," Wally grumbled back.

"Huh?" Gordon hummed absentmindedly at Dick's whispered tones. Dick didn't answer and Gordon didn't press. The man puffed his cigarette anxiously. "Robbery in progress. Nothing we can do. It started an hour ago. Seven hostages; one child, a teenager, three women and two men."

"Pro robbers?" Wally asked.

"Do you know of them? Are they frequent thieves?" Dick rephrased.

"No," Gordon said with a frown. "I wouldn't be so worried if they were professionals. They're amateurs."

Wally's eyebrows shot up. "Then just race in there and kick their butts. How hard can that be if they don't even see you coming?"

Dick just shook his head and examined Gordon's face as the man walked back to the mouth of the alley, leaning against the brick of the closest building and letting the smoke of his cigarette dissipate through the air. Seconds later, Dick was back on a nearby roof, watching as Gordon walked slowly back to the commotion with a sluggishness to him that Dick didn't remember him having before. He didn't even glance back, already having known that the infamous Robin had disappeared.

"Amateurs are the most dangerous. You can't predict them because they're driven by adrenaline and fear. They make mistakes, and more often than not, those mistakes kill. They don't have to intend to kill their hostages for their hostages to be dead before the night ends," Dick explained, already judging the best ways of entrance into the building. He didn't need a blueprint to figure it out. Banks in Gotham tended to be similarly built.

Wally didn't have a quip for that, but it must have been because of how similar the situation sounded. The redhead cleared his throat and spoke. "Then let's go," he demanded. "I don't want another ghost around. This is _my_ goddamn alternate physical plane and I don't like sharing."

Entering was relatively easy. Almost too easy, but Dick wasn't about to jinx his luck by repeating cheesy Hollywood lines. "In and out as quick as possible. I want to be gone before Batman hears about this."

"Isn't he at some party?" Wally whispered, though it was entirely unnecessary for him to do so.

"He has a police communication link."

Wally didn't question the matter further, but he coughed obnoxiously before Dick could crawl onto the exposed rafters above the main room of the bank. Below, the hostages had their backs against the front desk, with a blonde teenage girl clutching the head of a baby close to her. Beside her were three women, two brunette and one redhead, and two men, one of African American descent and the other a lanky blonde in a business suit. In front of them, two men in makeshift tattered black clothing had their shaky guns trained on them. Behind those two men were three others, talking to each other frantically and intensely gesturing with their weapons. Dick shot Wally a sharp look.

"Let me go below and look around. See if they have any hidden weapons," Wally said.

Dick felt an uneasy feeling swirl through the pit of his stomach as he looked at the hostages below. He wanted to say no, thought something would go wrong, yet wanted to say yes, thought that being uneasy was probably due to busting a robbery without a physical partner and blatantly disobeying his mentor. But all the while, there was the redheaded woman at the end of the line attempting to scoot behind the desk, no doubt to pull the silent alarm. He bit his lip and closed his eyes, giving a curt nod.

When he opened his eyes again, Wally was walking out from behind the desk. A weight slowly lifted from Dick's chest as the boy passed by the redhead woman and she remained unfazed. Wally, as quickly as a human could, began scanning the surrounding area, one eye on the woman. When Dick caught his gaze, he motioned that he was going to jump down because the woman had scraped the button on the bottom of her pants against the wood of the front desk and grabbed the attention of one of the men holding out his gun. The man began marching over to her and the teenager beside her as Wally pointed behind the desk with two fingers up. Two guns. As Dick landed softly behind the two men with guns and in front of the group arguing, concealed between their distracted attentions and the shadows, Wally pointed to the opposite end of the room behind a cushioned chair with one finger up. One gun.

When Dick appeared, the redheaded woman tensed, and her eyes darted to the other man who had yet to approach her, probably to see Dick better from the corner of her eyes without giving him away. Dick had to give a small smile to that. Smart woman. Recklessly somewhat clever woman. She reminded him of Wally.

Speaking of Wally, Dick wasn't sure what the boy intended to do after that. He couldn't touch anyone. Maybe he was planning on watching Dick's back as he fought, to warn the Boy Wonder about any sneak attacks. Whatever it was, th boy abandoned his post behind the front desk and raced to Dick's side.

That was also when the baby hiccupped.

Dick was impressed with the teenager's ability to keep the kid silent for so long, but it wasn't unusual for baby's to make obnoxious noises in precarious situations. Dick really shouldn't have been surprised. Yet, somehow, for some reason, he felt his heart spike to an all time high. Wally didn't look as concerned, only looking at Dick in worry when Dick hesitated at the split second that he was supposed to tackle the walking man in black. The baby started to softly cry as Dick's heart rate slowed and he opened his mouth to speak-

The baby screamed.

Wally froze in bewilderment as the teenage girl shuffled the baby in panic, confused and scared as to why the kid was suddenly erupting into a fit. Dick slid deeper into the shadows as one men from the arguing group groaned. "Shut that thing up!"

But the baby wouldn't be stopped, didn't even react as the man in black pointed his rifle at it and tears silently streamed down the girl's face. Instead, the baby kicked its feet and pointed its chubby arms at the- past the man in black.

Right at Dick.

Dick frowned. No, not quite. Not at Dick. Just a little to his right, the baby's eyes weren't on Dick at all. But as the baby blubbered uselessly, it wasn't the baby's eyes that Dick was worried about.

It was the two men with guns and all of the hostages.

"What the hell-!" the man shouted, eyes widened in panic as he raised his gun and began rapidly firing. Dick dodged, cursed that the man was amateur enough to fire aimlessly but not amateur enough to not know where to get an automatic rifle, and dropped a smoke bomb.

"Stop firing, you fucking piece of-"

"-the hell's goin' on-?"

"Stop! You're gonna make swiss cheese outta me!"

"Why are you firing at us?"

"Motherfucking Batman, that's what! Get'cher-"

"Calm the fuck down, it's just the kid!"

"Where'd he go?"

Meanwhile, the baby continued to scream, and Wally yelled with it. "The kid!" Wally exclaimed. "Dick, it can-"

"Wally!" Dick shouted. "Wally, direct me!" Screw the fact that everyone could hear him, it wasn't as if Wally was toting around a communication link.

"Where-oh, found you!" The resonating effect of Wally's dead voice prevented Dick from being able to pinpoint where he was, but by Wally's apparent view of him, Dick felt it safe to say that Wally had found a vantage point above. "Eight o'clock!"

Dick felt the satisfying contact of the heel of his foot impacting something hard. Noting that the object felt more like a rifle than it did a skull, Dick let his foot fall and swung with his other leg, sending the man carrying the rifle spinning onto the ground.

And so it continued, as the fog dissipated and Dick fought desperately to keep his attackers at bay without a team to help him, still with one eye on the hostages huddled beneath the front desk.

Wally continued to shout directions. "Behind you! Upper kick might be easier- he's trying to fake a- yup," and, "A guy's grabbing for the teenager!" and, "Four o'clock, with back up!"

When Dick's fist connected with the last man's face, that final blow leaving them groaning on the ground, Dick didn't let down his guard. He panted, fists positioned appropriately, feet perfectly spaced apart, staring with wild eyes at the circle of men around him.

The six hostages stared with wild eyes right back. "Uh, Robin…?" the African American man, who had yet to make a move or say a word, prodded hesitantly.

"They're done for," Wally reassured at the same time, and Dick glanced over his shoulder to see the ghost walking toward him with a nervous smile and zero eye contact.

"Yeah?" Dick said in reply to the man, but he kept his eyes trained on Wally. The man, uncertain if he should continue, remained awkwardly silent, and Dick didn't mind in the slightest.

"You done well, grasshopper," Wally said in a soft breath, puffing out his chest as if that would make the situation any less uncomfortable for himself.

"What was that?" Dick demanded. The hostages stilled quizzically. "Wally, answer me," commanded the Boy Wonder when Wally only ran his fingers nervously over the nape of his neck.

"That, that baby," Wally croaked. "It could, can, see me."

The hostages were keen in making sure that Dick made the first move, and he did. He fixed his gaze on the baby hiccuping from all the crying it had done and motioned for Wally to stay out of view. He crouched in front of the child and the teenager that held it. "Hey," Dick said to the baby. It hardly responded, only stared sleepily and miserably at the vigilante. The adults were shaking while the baby remained as cool as a cucumber. "Can you see him?"

The baby didn't answer, but it did shift its weight restlessly in its holder's arms, watching Wally with open eyes.

So Dick left.

He didn't know if Wally immediately followed. He didn't care. He didn't register Bruce's yelling when he entered the cave again in the traditional way, didn't register Bruce's silence afterwards that was louder than any yelling ever could be, because he didn't know what to feel. He wanted to feel happy. Someone else could finally see Wally. Though a baby, it proved at least somewhat that he wasn't crazy.

But then he turned on the news again and a rock settled into his gut once more as he watched as the stories were collected from the former victims, blankets draped around their shoulders. "-ally?" a blonde woman was saying with a concentrated look on her face. "Something like that. Wally. He-he kept saying Wally, even after the... men were down. I think he was talking on a bluetooth, or something like that." Bluetooth? Who used bluetooths anymore?

"Do you think that he could have been talking to Batman? Do you think that Batman's name is Wally?"

"I-I don't know, oh god, I don't-"

Dick was no longer paying attention, though. The only thing he was paying attention to was that Gordon had said there were seven hostages when Dick had gone in, but on that screen, Dick only counted six.


	8. Chapter 8

**I'm posting late again, ahh! This is the first time I've been in one place with wifi for more than thirty minutes all weekend, and I am so sorry. I need to plan better next time. I'll still post this Friday, and honestly, the shorter intervals between chapters are kind of beneficial because these next few are going to be shorter.**

 **I hope you enjoy and I hope you forgive me!**

* * *

"Someone I know of died."

"Were you two very close?"

"No."

"Then you blame yourself."

"How would you know?"

"You wouldn't have brought it up otherwise."

"I don't know. Maybe. It was my choices that led to her death."

"What choices were that?"

"I didn't let Wally go. He got in the way."

* * *

It didn't take a detective to realise that both Batman and Bruce were pissed.

And that was a dramatic understatement. Not only had Dick disobeyed direct orders, gone out while 'not fully well', not told anyone where he was going and deactivated all of his suit's trackers, but he had caused one of the biggest taboos in the hero business.

He had killed somebody.

Not directly, of course, but all of the rules that he had broken had led to just that. Somebody's death. An innocent civilian's death. It had been the redheaded woman that had ironically reminded Dick so much of Wally, and seeing her mugshot come up on the news more than once a day; her wild hair, green eyes, freckles and all; made pain burn within his chest. On the third day of not interacting with anyone in the human world after Bruce's thorough verbal whipping, seated on the couch, Bruce passed by with only one more thing to say:

"That's why we never break protocol."

Dick made sure that he didn't again. In fact, he didn't leave the manor at all. He didn't even touch the cave, and if Young Justice asked about him, Bruce never said a word.

Other than Alfred and occasionally Bruce, Dick saw Wally. But Wally never spoke. It was unusual for Wally to be utterly silent, particularly in tense situations, so it regularly caused Dick to think back to what Miss. Frances had said. Did Wally reflect Dick's own emotions? Did Wally do everything that Dick wished he could do himself?

Yes, he did.

On the way to Dick's next visit with Miss. Frances, the car ride was uncomfortable. It would have been far more uncomfortable if Bruce were driving instead of Alfred, but Dick could give positive credit to getting three visits a week for the privilege of Bruce being too busy to pay attention to his ward. "How has psychiatry been, Master Dick? Have you been treated well?" Alfred asked in concern as they pulled up to the front of the quaint house-turned-office, and Dick figured that the British man had been up late reading too many horror stories about misdiagnosed patients again. He could barely bother to express surprise at finding out he was in psychotherapy, either. What did it matter? How was it any different?

"Yeah, it's interesting," Dick responded vaguely as he sluggishly opened the door to the street. Alfred looked like he wanted to ask more, but Dick had turned his back before the man was given the chance.

The waiting room used to be a living room adjacent to the house's kitchen, which was closed off by a screen. There were magazines scattered around with a gallon of water in the corner. All in all, the soft furniture's warm colours and sunlight streaming window was meant to look welcoming, but it only make Dick feel alienated. He contemplated walking directly upstairs to where the office was instead of waiting to be guided. He'd been there enough times. Before he could approach the first step, though, the screen obscuring the kitchen was pushed aside.

"Richard?" Miss. Frances chirped as she peered out. Nudging the screen aside with her shoulder, she presented Dick with roughly a dozen cookies and two glasses of milk balanced precariously on a plate. "Go on upstairs. I'll join you in a minute."

Dick shook his head and instead stepped forward to grab the two glasses of milk, lifting the weight from her arms as he began walking up the stairs. The lady beamed after him. Once in her office upstairs, she set the cookies gently on the coffee table between them. "You're awfully quiet today. Do you want to tell me what's bothering you?"

Dick shrugged.

"What about the person who passed away? You talked about her during our last session."

Another shrug.

Miss. Frances slid the plate of cookies closer to Dick as she reached beside her desk chair for her clipboard. "How's Wally been doing?"

A faint tingling sensation slowly crept down Dick's back and caused the hair of his neck to stand on end as he lazily scanned his eyes across the room. Seeing nothing, he twisted in the couch to look towards the far window, before turning back and folding his hands in his lap. "Is he not here?" Miss. Frances inquired, and Dick winced because her voice felt too loud for a too delicate situation.

Dick forced himself to reach forward for a cookie. He made no move to eat it, feeling the thickness of heavy, sticky saliva coating his tongue and throat in clumps. Instead, he slowly began crumbling the edges of the cookie into his hand. "I'm kind of mad at him," he finally admitted.

"Is it because of what happened last week with that person?"

"Mostly," agreed Dick.

"Is he mad at you?"

Dick paused. "I didn't do anything," he said with certainty. "But I was ignoring him while getting ready for school a couple days ago and he got upset. Then he left."

"Has he come back at all?"

Dick shook his head.

"Does he scare you?"

Dick froze, his fingers stilling over the remains of the broken cookie tucked between the creases of his palm. "No," he frowned.

"He's upset and angry with you, but he doesn't frighten you?" Miss. Frances clarified.

"No," insisted Dick defensively.

"I want you to do something for me," she said as she pressed her clipboard into her lap. Dick said nothing, waiting for her to elaborate, and she did. She put the board aside and walked to her desk, sliding open a drawer and plucking a small packet from within. "I want you to tell me the first thing that comes into your mind when you see these." She was gripping the cards in her hands too tightly, almost shakily. Her body was tense.

She looked excited.

Inkblots. Dick knew what those were. They were a vague test used to help diagnose various mental illnesses, where the way a person thought and felt would be interpreted from their interpretations of undetermined shapes. He knew it and he didn't care. His heart felt heavy, his head felt light, and his limbs felt loaded with lead.

"Can you tell me what this looks like?"

"A bat."

"A computer."

"A book."

"Cave."

"Airplane."

"Bike."

"House."

"The Joker."

Miss. Frances faltered for a moment at that response and turned the picture towards herself. After a brief examination, she silently went back to turning cards. But the Joker was suddenly on Dick's mind.

"Crowbar."

"Mask."

"Rope. Maybe a snake."

"Car."

"Cat."

"Hang glider."

"Pepperspray."

For fifteen minutes it continued, until the therapist - psychiatrist, Dick mentally corrected - set aside the cards and asked him questions. That was really just a nicer way to go about saying 'interrogated', though. Strangely enough, Dick felt too exhausted to analyse them. Finally, when their time was up, shown by a soft knock on the door, Dick couldn't have been more relieved.

"Are you alright to sit here for a bit, Richard? I just need to talk to Mr. Wayne for a few minutes."

Those few minutes stretched into nearly an hour. At one point, Dick had gone to press his ear against the door, but only caught bits and pieces of sentences. The pieces that he did catch did nothing to calm his nerves. "...convinced that everyone...Mr. Wayne…said that no one he knows has died...very vague...depressed...and agitated…" Dick sunk too far into thought about the alarming one-sided conversation he could catch and had to abruptly spring away when the doorknob was suddenly turned.

Miss. Frances entered again with a cell phone pressed against her ear. Dick quickly jumped onto the couch. Instead of Bruce entering as Dick had expected, though, it was Lucius Fox. The family friend greeted Dick with a kind smile and stood against the wall. "It's nice to see you again, Dick," he said. "How have you been?"

"Fine. You?" Dick responded. His palms felt sweaty.

"Fine," the man answered. "Mr. Wayne was too busy to come get you, so I'm taking you back home."

"Where's Alfred?" asked Dick cautiously. He could see Miss. Frances glance at him for a moment at his quick, almost hostile response. She scribbled something more onto her clipboard, quickly, her fingers enthusiastic, and the teenager felt his anxiety rise.

"Calm down, Dick," Lucius reassured softly. Softly, as if he were speaking to a child. "Alfred is fine. Mr. Wayne just preferred that I came and got you."

"Why?" Dick snapped.

"Richard, it's okay," Miss. Frances finally said, speaking up with a gleam in her eye, but she didn't explain what was so okay. Dick watched in silence, back ramrod straight and shoulders stiff as she retrieved something from a bag on her desk. She held up the small bottle to the light. "See this? I spoke with Mr. Fox and your doctor and we have all agreed for you to take this. Just one a day, every morning before you go to school. Can you do that for me?"

Dick eyed the bottle uncertainly. "Does Bruce know about this?"

Miss. Frances smiled. "Of course. You can ask him yourself. It's illegal to give you medication without informing your guardian, you know."

"Does he know what kind of medication it is?" he pressed.

Miss. Frances only slid the bottle across the table toward him. She made sure not to approach him, and Dick didn't blame her. He felt on edge and he couldn't pinpoint why, as if any sound would make him jump out of his skin. "I've been doing this for many years, Richard," Miss. Frances insisted, sitting down and leaning forward with her fingers crossed in her lap. "I promise you, you're going to be getting all the care that you need. You're due for a doctor's visit in one week. This is a trial run, to make sure that this is the medication for you. Don't worry about a thing."

With suspiciously shaking fingers, Dick reached down and lightly folded the bottle into his hand.

Miss. Frances stood up and Lucius seemed to sag a little in relief. Dick couldn't fathom why and was stuck on that thought, so he paid no mind to the adult's casual conversing as he was ushered out the door. Before he left, Miss. Frances gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder and a sharp smile. "I'll see you next week, okay?"

"Okay."

The car ride to the manor was as equally quiet as the car ride with Alfred from it. Lucius dropped him off a little ways from the front door. "I'm a busy man and don't want to offend Alfred by not going in for tea," he apologised as Dick shut the door. The teenager chuckled lightly to humour the man as he lazily rang the front door bell, watching Lucius' car pull away.

"Master Dick?" Alfred asked in surprise when the door opened. "Back already? Oh dear, it seems that the time has escaped me. Why hadn't you called?" The butler peered over Dick's shoulder to catch a glimpse of Lucius' tail light. "Was that Mr. Fox?"

"Do you know why Bruce didn't want you picking me up?" Dick asked as he stepped inside for the front door to be closed. Alfred hummed as he took Dick's jacket off and hung it on the coat rack.

"Yes," the elderly man admitted. Dick didn't know whether to give a sigh of relief or be on his guard. There was a muffled jingle from Dick's jacket, and Alfred paused for a moment before going and rifling through its pockets. He brought out the pill bottle with a slightly alarmed look. "What's this?"

"Medication. It's from Miss. Frances," Dick said emotionlessly, staring at the label of the bottle. "Don't change the subject."

Alfred turned the bottle over in his hand curiously, before taking off towards the kitchen. Dick followed at a slow pace. "Miss. Frances and Master Bruce suggested it wise that they see how you react to people you don't see very much, but whom you're supposedly friendly with," Alfred paused for a moment, his fingers grazing the marble counter of the kitchen. "You were friendly, I presume?"

"No," Dick deadpanned, eyes narrowed. "I was worried about you."

The bottle seemed to tighten just the smallest bit in Alfred's palm, and Dick didn't know how to react to the man's uncertain posture. "I assure you, Master Dick, I am perfectly well." He carefully opened a kitchen cabinet and slid the bottle onto a shelf.

Later that night, as Dick sat on the edge of his bed, looking at but not seeing the pile of videogames accumulated on his floor, he felt an unwelcome sensation push the hairs of his arms up.

He thought about the bottle with a label that never left his mind, sitting innocently on a shelf downstairs. Only, it didn't feel innocent. Its presence felt suffocating, as if it were lingering at Dick's door just waiting until he stepped out, to taunt him that he was no different. No different from the crazy men and women that he helped put away. Concoctions of medications like the one he was given were supposed to be in the cave. Examined to determine what might have gone wrong with the people that were given them, to determine if they might have been tampered with, or if they might have been abused. Not in the kitchen. They didn't belong in the kitchen. That was Richard Grayson's home, not Robin's. Those lives didn't intermingle.

Because Dick knew that drug. He'd seen _Clozapine_ many times before. He'd held it many times before.

But before, it had never been meant for him.

* * *

 **A/N: SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT THING YOU MUST READ TO UNDERSTAND ANYTHING AT ALL:**

 **This is GOTHAM. A city overrun with psychotic freaks. It's a corrupt city with laws that are not as heavily enforced as other places, if enforced at all (if anybody remembers, the Gotham police force was a corrupt, nasty and power hungry place before Gordon came around). This goes especially for medication and drugs. For those who don't know what I'm going on about:**

 **Clozapine is an atypical antipsychotic drug normally used to treat severe schizophrenia. It's a drug meant only to be taken if the patient is resistant to other treatments tried before. It can have dangerous side effects and the patient needs to be regularly monitored and tested to make sure that it's going well. It cannot be taken by people under 16 or over 60. It's also very important that the person prescribing it knows the patient's full and total medical history, as well as allergies, blood related problems, etc.**

 **Not only that, there are also far more steps involved in diagnosing schizophrenia than what Dick got. In a good, lawful society, people getting diagnosed with schizophrenia may even undergo brain scans to make extra sure that it's schizophrenia they're talking about and not some other mental illness (because illnesses can be easy to misdiagnose, particularly when it comes to illnesses having to do with the brain). However, just imagine how many schizophrenics there are in Gotham, or people with other varying mental illnesses. A lot. Imagine how many a psychiatrist working there sees, particularly a psychotherapist? Even more. In my opinion, what Miss. Frances did was wrong. But is it justified because it's the normal thing to do? Well, that's up to you guys.**

 **OTHER REALLY IMPORTANT NOTES: If you didn't understand what the whole deal with Mr. Fox was, a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia is just that - paranoia. Extreme paranoia. This includes, but not limited to: believing everyone is trying to kill you, believing everyone is conspiring against you, withdrawing completely from social contact, turning against friends/loved ones, feeling like you're being watched all the time (by the government, your friends, etc.), you name it. It can be so severe that a person suffering could, say, receive water from their mother and freak out because they think there's poison in the water, and that their mother is trying to kill them. There are no limits. So Mr. Fox was there to see if Dick was being unreasonably hostile and withdrawn, and that suspicion and hostility is what Dick ended up expressing.**

 **Many apologies for the long note and the long wait, but I hate to leave any confusion! If there are more unanswered questions, ask in the reviews and I'll address them next chapter. Thanks for reading through all of this, you rock!**


	9. Chapter 9

**And back with an EARLY update this time! I'm off to Aki Con (one of my cosplay's being Robin, and I'm so excited. It looks amazing and he's going to be so fun) for the weekend, so that's no wifi until Monday.**

 **As a heads up, I believe these next few chapters are going to be pretty short. I try to avoid switching character POV's in the middle of chapters as much as possible, so that makes for some pretty short and some pretty long updates. I hope you enjoy anyway~**

* * *

A baby's face reminded Wally of a chipmunk.

No, really. It would not be hard at all to fit a few hundred acorns in there. Not that Wally would ever feed acorns to a baby.

He would have been an awful father.

If the redhead were honest with himself, he had never thought much about babies before. Children in general were always first priority when he was at a site of disaster, but that was as far as his experience stretched. They were like little alien...things. But wow, when babies were the only people that knew he existed, it was shocking how fast he got attached.

He had spent the last few days - okay, maybe a bit more than a few days, but who was there to judge? - sitting out in the park, watching them. It sounded a bit creepy, even in his own head, but that was the gist of it. Wally would watch them and wave and smile and, when no one was looking at them, walk up and make funny faces. He made it his personal job to put a smile on their chubby cheeks and puffy lips. There was even the occasional child who would hold coherent conversation with him, and it wasn't suspicious because their parents would blow it off as another imaginary friend.

Wally had many ideas as to what he'd have amounted to, but an imaginary friend had never been one of them.

One thing he figured out early on was that children above three years old couldn't see him. That fact felt familiar, as if he'd heard it before, and the redhead sorely regretted not paying attention to the crazy superstitions that had circled his late grandmother's head. Sadly, he didn't know the flexibility of that unwritten rule - could underdeveloped, older children see him? What about fast-growing younger children? If he put a little thought into it, Wally could make his bored park endeavours into a personal experiment. An experiment that no one would ever know the results to, but an experiment nonetheless. Maybe he would tell them to Dick.

After Dick stopped being so pissed at him.

Because Wally had royally screwed up. Again.

Which caused another life to go up in flames.

But he wasn't going to think about that. Happy thoughts. Happy children. Happy thoughts and happy children.

"Aren't you a little old to play here?" a pouty-faced blonde girl suddenly accused while Wally sat with his legs crossed beneath a pine tree. Dragged from his thoughts, the redhead blinked up at her in surprise. The needles were prickly and difficult to see through, so Wally hadn't expected any children to happen upon him while he was so deep in thought. Apparently, though, little girls were the exception.

"Aren't you a little young? You're going to get poked by a bunch of needles if you stay here," Wally warned warmly. The girl paid him no mind.

"You will, too," the girl said as she sat back on her knees.

"I don't mind," shrugged Wally.

"Yeah? Me neither," she insisted bravely, proving her point by shifting to a cross legged position. "See? Criss-cross applesauce."

Wally couldn't help it. He laughed. The girl looked a bit offended by that, but her phrase made him so abruptly remember daycare that it was both parts excruciatingly painful and oddly uplifting. "I see that. I'm Wally," he greeted.

"I'm Marie! My friends left," she answered in turn.

"They left the park?" asked the redhead.

Marie nodded. "They had to go to soccer. Did you see them? It was a girl and her brother. We were playing over there"-she pointedly excitedly across the field-"but they never let me kick the ball because I'm too little." The girl looked so downright appalled by her age that Wally felt his pain slowly seep away.

"How old are you?" The best part about experimenting with what ages of children could see him was that children usually remembered the exact age that they were, and displayed it proudly.

Marie smiled widely. "Four!" she exclaimed, holding out four fingers. "Are you a teenager? Mama doesn't like teenagers."

Wally quickly made sure that he didn't look so shocked at her age for fear of scaring her off. He swallowed and gave a quick smile. "I am. I'm 16. But I'm a good teenager, don't worry."

Four. She was four? She was pretty intelligent. Very intelligent, actually. But how come Wally had seen so many four year olds walk right through him? It didn't make any sense. Maybe there were more factors involved than he had been aware of.

As the time passed, Marie transitioned from trying, and failing, to climb the pine tree, to wanting Wally to push her on the swing, to making ant prisons on the sidewalk. Though Wally couldn't help her with any of those things, he did his best to make it so that she wouldn't notice. He wasn't strong enough to catch her if she fell, he was too tired to push her on the swing, he was afraid of bugs. But crouching as close as he did to her on the grass, taking care not to touch the manmade sidewalk that he'd float straight through, he should have seen the inevitable coming. Marie picked a handful of flowers and stuck them into Wally's face before letting them go, amusing herself with the way they drifted with the wind. However, instead of falling into his lap, the flowers fell through his lap. Marie stared.

Wally really had no explanation. "Uh," he started, before collecting himself and remembering what he told the children before. He tried to smile warmly. "Shh, don't tell your parents. Only kids can see me. Parents are all grown up. I'm like Peter Pan."

Marie examined him with big, round eyes, and carefully reached out to touch him. He let her, and watched as her fingers curled uselessly through his shoulder. "You…," she murmured, growing excited. She suddenly jumped up, ecstatic, as Wally leaned back in surprise. "You're an angel!"

"'An angel'?" Wally echoed, dumbfounded.

"Yeah, mama tells me about angels all the time! Are you my guardian angel?" Marie pressed, growing closer to his face with a tooth filled grin.

Wally gave a breathy chuckle. "Yeah. Something like that."

"Where are your wings?"

"My wings? Uh," Wally had to think about that for a moment. He was normally an awful liar, but seeing the girl's happy eyes, he thought that he had finally discovered the one type of lying he was good at. "They're hidden, just like everyone else's. I don't need wings to fly."

"You don't?" Marie asked in awe.

"Nope. See? Look around you, at everyone here. I look just like them, don't I? You didn't know that I was an angel until now. So how do you know who else is really an angel?" Marie followed Wally's gesture to look around the park, at all the children screeching in joy and the parents loitering about in clumps.

"What about God. What's he like?"

Non-existent, Wally wanted to say. He settled with something a bit different. "He talks about your mama a lot."

"He does?"

"Of course. Can you show me which one is your mama?" He hoped that angels weren't expected to know everyone's family trees.

Marie pointed to a long-haired brunette sitting with her legs crossed on a bench, bouncing a baby in her grip. She was smiling and nodding her head to whatever an Asian woman seated beside her was saying. "That's my brother, too," Marie explained, referring to the baby in the brunette's hold.

"God says that you're very lucky to have your mama, and you should help her out with whatever she needs. Especially with your brother. Can you do that?" It felt awkward talking about something that he had zero belief in, but the fascinated look in the girl's eyes made it all worth the while.

"Like cleaning my room?" she asked.

"And drawing pictures. You draw pictures for your mama, right?" Wally asked, and Marie frantically nodded. "Keep doing that. She loves them." She had to. Seeing the various drawings that Wally used to draw of Flash taped all around Barry's lab was the first thing that Wally had noticed when he first went to work with him, and the thing that he remembered the most.

Wally still looked at them when he joined Barry there. Especially when Barry would stare at them himself for hours on end.

The next hour passed quickly. Too quickly, in Wally's opinion. He faintly recalled always having been just the slightest bit annoyed when he was incessantly interrogated by children with questions that he couldn't answer, but he found that being an angel wasn't so bad.

The sun was setting when Marie was finally called over by her mother, who was reaching to place Marie's baby brother into a stroller. "It's time to go," the woman said.

"Already? Can I play a little more?" Marie begged.

"It's getting dark," the woman sighed, looking suspiciously at the empty park. "And there's no one here anymore. Your friends are gone."

"No, they're not," Marie insisted. "Wally's still here."

"'Wally'?" repeated Marie's mother, stilling where she had been moving to adjust her youngest child's blankets.

"My guardian angel!" exclaimed the girl.

The woman visibly relaxed with a laugh. "Well, tell your angel that he'll hear from you in your prayers tonight."

Marie bounced gleefully and quickly turned around. "I have to go now, Wally!" she said, facing the redheaded boy.

"I know. Be good," he answered, but it was over Marie's own words, which had continued after he thought she had stopped talking.

"Wally?" she asked, and Wally held the breath that he didn't need as a sudden tightness squeezed his lungs.

She was looking straight at him.

"Marie?" her mother called, already having gotten up and ready to push the stroller down the sidewalk. "Are you done?"

Marie pouted for a moment, before shrugging and smiling widely at her mother. "Yeah, I think he went home. Will I see him again?"

And, with angry fists and a denial of the tears in his eyes, Wally answered, "No."

As he watched Marie and her mother walk away, Wally could just catch the tail end of their conversation.

"Do you want to walk all the way home?"

"Yeah, I'm four! I can walk!"

"Almost. Your birthday isn't until tomorrow, remember?"


	10. Chapter 10

Dick was forced to go to school the next morning. That wasn't too much of a problem, considering he had wanted to go to school the entire time and it seemed like it was only Bruce's authoritarian habits that were keeping him out, but there was one downside. That downside involved having to get up early only to stare childishly at a single white tablet on the dining table.

"I'll say, I don't believe your medication did anything to you," Alfred commented as he placed a cup of tea beside Dick's eggs and bacon sitting beside a dash of psychopathic prevention. Dick eyed the tea in disappointment. He really preferred coffee, but Alfred wouldn't let him have any unless it was a holiday. According to the less-authoritarian-but-still-more-powerful butler, Dick could have coffee when he made his own money to buy his own coffee with. Emphasis on the made his own money part, because it wasn't as if he lived in the manor of one of America's richest men or anything. Not at all.

"I'm not going to take it," Dick said.

"You do realise that Master Bruce is only allowing you to go back to school because of your new medication?" responded Alfred.

"I'm not taking it."

"Master Dick, I implore," sighed the butler.

"Bruce isn't even around, how's he gonna know if I take it or not? You won't tell him if I don't want you to," said Dick. "I'm not crazy, Alfred," he added, almost as an afterthought.

Alfred paused where he stood with his arms crossed behind his back. "You don't seem crazy to me, Master Dick. But you do seem… unwell. And I'm no expert in psychology. All I want, as well as all that Master Bruce wants, is for you to be healthy."

Alfred knew Dick better than anyone. Sometimes, Dick felt like Alfred knew Dick better than Dick knew himself. He always knew what to say and when to say it. If Bruce was Dick's father, then Alfred was the enigmatic grandfather. So for Alfred to say that, it made Dick want to scream. It made him want to throw an entire fit and yell about how Alfred had utterly betrayed him, had yet to even speak to him about his feelings on everything, had so readily taken Bruce's side. But he couldn't raise his voice with his grandfather. Alfred would probably respond with something wise and thoughtful that would make Dick rethink all of his existence, anyway. Dick didn't want to think anymore. What happened to just doing?

He owed a lot to Alfred, no matter how he felt he was being treated right then. Alfred had done enough to make up for it, Dick realised as he nudged the bland white tablet with his pointer finger. If Alfred thought that he was unwell, then the least that Dick could do was make him happy and try to get better.

Was he really crazy? Maybe he was. Maybe the tablets could actually help. Maybe, by taking them, he could make Alfred and Bruce happy. Make himself happy. Make them a family.

Would making them happy make them a family again?

"Shouldn't I be taking antidepressants instead?" Dick asked quietly. "Just to be sure?" But Alfred said nothing.

He was taken to school only after the smooth white tablet had melted on his tongue, descending down his throat in a disguise of saliva while Dick's inner thoughts screamed for it to stop.

* * *

Barbara was mad, cautious, and anxious. Mostly mad, but that was just because she was Barbara.

"Where the hell have you been?" she exclaimed when she saw Dick emerging from the sleek Wayne Mercedez. He knew that the expensive car was for image, and it was technically 'casual' compared to how some students got dropped off, but he would never get used to the flashiness of the rich.

"Sick," Dick answered, and he felt a jolt in his gut when he realised that that was exactly what he was. He was 'unwell.' He was sick.

"Sick enough to skip over a week of school? Paying no attention to the fact that you left me vulnerable to the cruelty of high school, especially a high school filled with kids worth more than my house, but you missed so much work! Mr. Billard's going to skin you!" Barbara went on, engulfing Dick in a hug. He felt himself tense up, but so did she, and she immediately stepped back with a worried frown. Dick had never tensed during a hug before - he was always the one to give them - but he hadn't been hugged in so long that it felt alien.

Maybe not so long. How long had it actually been?

"Okay, what gives? What really happened?" she demanded, holding him at arm's length with a firm grip to his shoulders. Dick probably should have taken that moment to reflect on why he had ever considered becoming friends with the one girl in the school who could probably kick everyone's asses (but him, of course). Then again, he knew that he'd never truly get along with a damsel in distress.

"Babs," Dick started, and he wasn't even going to try and deny that he wasn't telling her the full truth. "Just let it go."

Her fingers curled into the fabric of his sleeves, but his level stare must have made her realise something, because she promptly dropped her grip. It didn't mean that she'd drop the subject, though. Dick knew that all too well. She was probably going to go to her father's office after school and try to bribe either the Commissioner or the GCPD database into giving up what was wrong. Persistence wasn't always the most welcome thing.

At least she knew better than to immediately pursue it with him. Dick's palms were sweaty and his head was dizzy and he was more tired than he'd been in a very long time. It'd only been thirty minutes since Dick had left the manor and all he wanted to do was go back.

Dick's request only lasted in Barbara's head until lunchtime, apparently. "Is it Wally?" she asked, and Dick promptly lost his appetite. Wally. Everything was about Wally. He was sick of Wally as much as his own mind was sick of his sanity. Barbara sat beside him as he pushed away his tray. "I mean, you haven't acted like this since, y'know."

"You're not the most subtle person in the world," Dick replied. He surprised himself with his bitterness. Everything just kept backtracking, didn't it? And it was way too hot in the room.

"I'm not trying to be," she answered. "You know you can't ignore your problems forever."

"I'm not."

"I'm pretty sure you are."

"Tell that to my therapist." The word left a bad taste on Dick's tongue.

"'Therapist'?" Barbara echoed.

"What? Are you really that surprised?" Dick challenged. "First I'm depressed, then everyone's so freaking convinced that I'm insane, I miss school for two weeks and come back avoiding humanity, and you're shocked that I'm seeing a therapist?" _Psycho_ therapist.

Barbara paused to take in her best friend's words. "No, not really, I'm just sad that you have to," she said. "And come on, you've always been a little insane." It was a last ditch effort to maintain some sort of light atmosphere around them, but with as much misinformation as she had been given, the joke only made Dick's dark thoughts worse.

Dick didn't eat his lunch. Barbara didn't eat much of hers, either.

By the time lunch had ended and fifth period had approached, Dick couldn't think straight. His entire body felt heavy and hot and when he went to grip his pencil, his fingers wouldn't grip. His fist wasn't a tight fist, and trying to actually write the name of the To Kill a Mockingbird movie on the top of his notes was an impossibility when every line of the letters turned out skewed and shaky.

How come everything always went wrong in English class?

The second that the first ten minutes of class had passed, Mr. Billard's bathroom rule, Dick was out the doors, across the halls, and into the nearest men's restroom. He collapsed against the sink because running had lurched his head as if it were his stomach at sea, but when he folded himself over the faucet to try and get rid of whatever might have been making him feel that way, nothing happened. He gripped the porcelain with shaky white knuckles instead as classmates he was sure he had never seen before cautiously tiptoed past him, stealing curiously suspicious glances but never uttering a word. That was fine. Dick would rather it be kept that way. Life would have been so much easier if nobody ever uttered a word.

He only returned to class when he felt that his head had stopped spinning and twisting and turning, and it was just to grab his binder because the bell rang seconds later. Mr. Billard didn't comment as he left, but he did give Dick a look that had the hairs standing on the acrobat's neck and his gut sinking with dread. The man shook his head and picked up his phone as Dick disappeared around the corner.

His next period was computer science. Dick suddenly preferred English.

He wasn't bad at computer science. In fact, he was so good in it that when he had hit the top of his class, Bruce hadn't let him do any of his homework for a good week in order to drop his grades. Dick didn't know how suspicious it would be if the main technology company in Gotham happened to have a heir that was also rather good with technology, but Bruce was insistent that there could be no ties between Dick's talents and Robin's talents. It was a pain in the ass, to say the least. But despite how much he aced the class, it was useless when he couldn't see the screen.

The small numbers for coding were suddenly incomprehensible. What used to be the most understandable language that Dick had ever learned suddenly looked like it had been written in Welsh. Every bracket looked like parenthesis, every dash like an underline, every asterisk like a pound. He blinked rapidly, but that only served to sway him as his vision blurred.

"Dick?" spoke Miss. Adams. She had a soft voice, like a bell, and Dick could only move his palm from the mouse to wipe on his pants as he slowly turned to face her, careful not to swing his head any. "Could you step outside with me for a moment?"

He got up carefully, he walked carefully, and he shut the door behind the two of them carefully. They ended up in a small alley of a hallway leading to the art room that opened into the main hall. His teacher's sneakers squelched softly over the tiles, only serving to remind Dick that it really was Miss. Adams' first year teaching. That only made him respect her more, though, knowing how hard the first year of a new profession could be (for example, he was beaten half to death by his partner's former friend during his own).

"I wanted to ask how you've been," Miss. Adams began. Her hazel hair fell around her shoulders in disarray and, likely realising how unprofessional that looked, she swept it back. Dick thought that she fit the stereotype for an enthusiastic art teacher more than any stereotype for anything involving cold computers and monitors.

"Fine," Dick answered.

Miss. Adams sighed. "I find that hard to believe, Dick. You've missed a lot of school. Would you care to explain why?" Somehow, the young teacher made it sound personal, as if it were her duty as a friend and not as a grade recorder to know. Dick couldn't decide whether that made him grateful or uncomfortable, and thinking about things like that made his blurry vision worse. He was ready to be done with the day. He felt ill. More so than he technically was.

"I bet Bruce already told you why."

"I was told that you were leaving because of your mental health, and I just want to know that you're okay. It's my job to help you succeed and be the best that you can, but I can't do that without taking into mind what might be holding you back," she replied evenly. She sounded like she was holding her words back in some way, that there was more that she wanted to say, and Dick credited that to why she was starting to sound like a broken record. Dick didn't realise that he hadn't answered until her evenly lined mouth morphed into a frown. "Dick?"

"Sorry, I'm just dealing with a lot," he muttered. The tiles were swimming.

If Dick had thought that she had sounded like a broken record before, he didn't know how to describe her right then. "I-talk-here an-when-you kno-issu-ick?-Di-ick?" He tried to hold a steady palm against the wall, but everything was starting to melt together and the only things he could really understand were the disassembled syllables of his name growing in volume.

"Dick!"

The only thing he could think before he dropped to the ground was:

 _Not again._

* * *

 **So, call me curious - what do you guys think is going on?**


	11. Chapter 11

**So, before posting this chapter, I realised it was 10,000 words long. After about an hour of debating, I decided to split it up, because I'm secretly cruel. When my at-the-time girlfriend read this chapter (when it wasn't split up), she suffered from secondhand embarrassment because of what happens in the second half (being posted next week) and all that goes down. Because of that, you can say I'm super excited to post this.**

 **As of what I have total of this entire story typed up, we're officially past the halfway point! I still have a few more chapters to write, so don't think this fan fiction is ending any time soon.**

 **I hope you guys enjoy!**

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Dick was released from the hospital two days after he woke up. Honestly, he hadn't minded being there. That time around, he wasn't in a sick bed because everyone was certain that he was insane (at least, the nurses didn't seem to think so). He was there because, according to a blonde nurse who looked like she hated her life, Dick had simply been dehydrated.

It wasn't a far stretch, especially after Dick had told her about his eating and drinking habits as of late - or lack thereof. A doctor afterwards came in to try and talk to him about possibilities for antidepressants, but when Dick had explained that he was already being given medication, all the doctor did was put in an IV and tell him to take a break from school.

Dick was sincerely tired of taking breaks from school, but if it meant that he would stop fainting in public, maybe it was for the best. It was as if he were allergic to his education.

The manor was silent. It had always been silent, but before, Dick had taken that as a challenge to be even louder. The longer that time went on, though, the heavier the silence became. It was an oppressive silence, but oppressive of what, Dick didn't care to know.

He rarely saw Bruce around, but he rarely saw Alfred, either. Then again, that was his own fault. Dick had retreated to locking himself in his room, because if he was going to be forbidden from doing anything involving the outdoors or even parts of the indoors, he might as well stop trying to be an active youth. His eyes burned from the glare of his computer and television screens at ungodly hours of the night, and he slept in so late that the breakfast Alfred left on his bedside table with his medication was too stiff and cold to comfortably eat when he found it. He normally threw it out, his appetite too far gone, causing him to want to puke an hour later because taking medication on an empty stomach was never a good idea. It didn't exactly stop him.

Ever since being released from the hospital, his 'condition' of dehydration had only gotten progressively worse. He wasn't naive enough to think that it was completely from lack of liquids. The possibility of that being a contributing factor was great, but the entire reason? He didn't think that shakiness, fever-like hazes, and odd bouts of confusion were caused by drying up from the inside out, but at least he wasn't in public. Dick, in the privacy of his own room, was free to stare miserably at his ceiling, only snapping out of it every few days during the seconds where he forgot why he wasn't at school.

He only went out when it was time to go to another session. Talking to Miss. Frances amounted to his complete time of socialisation, and he didn't really feel the need to change that. However, apart from his unwillingness to talk to other human beings, Dick hated feeling like he was forced to do something like stay at home, even if it was something that he was going to do anyway, so he expressed his concerns about his symptoms to Miss. Frances on the first visit after his hospital stay.

"Your body is just adjusting to the medication," she said. "Make sure to drink lots of liquids and eat some good food, okay? I hear that your butler is an extraordinary cook." Then, later to Alfred: "Here is the new schedule. We're going to start increasing his doses. No hallucinations, you said? Then he seems to be doing relatively well."

Barbara called that Friday, minutes after the clock said that school had been released. Dick was lying on the floor, his knees and calves tucked against his hips as he stretched back and tried to touch his desk legs. It would have been a yoga pose had the position not felt so natural for him. Snapping up, no one had called him in a long time (which wasn't anyone's fault, really, his only friends were Barbara and Young Justice, the living members of which didn't know his phone number), Dick stared blankly at the wall before lunging for his cell. He was surprised at how enthusiastic he was. Seconds ago, he had been mildly irritated at the thought of anyone trying to disturb his inner thoughts (which honestly consisted of nothing at that point).

"Hello?" Dick asked tentatively into the line.

"Dick!" Barbara all but yelled into his ear. "What happened? I heard you fainted! I wanted to call you earlier, but dad thinks you need to get your rest so I was trying to give you that, but come on, you're probably just trolling some poor sap on the internet anyway-"

Dick gave a breathy laugh, but a smile didn't come. He felt the tendrils of happiness warm his stomach, but its arms just weren't long enough to touch his lips. "I did. And it's okay, I've actually been kind of bored."

"Are you feeling any better?" Barbara demanded.

No. Far, far worse. "Yeah."

Dick could practically hear her relieved smile. "Good, because you're required to come over. Dad told me to invite you to dinner when I was finally 'able' to talk to you. I'm pretty sure he just knows that I was going to call you whether or not he approved, though. Mr. Wayne can come, too, if he isn't too busy. I don't know if he and my dad have really sat down and talked. Maybe it could squeeze a friendship where you could come over more often."

"I'm sure they've talked before"-under the cloak of darkness, with one of them wearing a mask-"but it probably wouldn't hurt. Maybe some other time." Dick felt some waves of nausea at the thought of re-entering society. People would probably look at him weirdly. They probably all knew already about his mysterious 'sickness'. It had probably gone on the news - the kids at Gotham Academy loved to tell stories. Maybe the press had already asked Miss. Frances about it, and Miss. Frances had told them. Maybe Miss. Frances-

"'Other time'?" Barbara echoed, bemused. "Why not now? I'm free, you're definitely free, and both of us are mostly healthy."

"Just some other time," Dick repeated, feeling his neck itch with something suspicious.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, all good."

"Okay," Barbara answered suspiciously, "but you've been acting weird. I mean, more weird than usual, and apart from being sick and all." She paused for a moment before jesting, "Do you have some sort of alternate agenda that I don't know about? Do you secretly actually have a social life? Rude. I want to party, too."

 _Th-thump, th-thump,_ went Dick's heart. "No," he said, perhaps a bit too quickly, and what for? Wasn't he supposed to be good at lying?

Barbara paused. "O.K.," she drawled awkwardly. "Uh, so, what're you up to?" she said in a tone that suggested a long, amusing few hours full of joking with the possibility of later escalating into a Skype call.

But Dick was feeling twitchy and nervous, and he no longer wanted to talk. "Nothing," he answered curtly.

"Come on, I bet you're up to something mischievous," the girl pressed.

"No," the boy defensively insisted.

There was a crackle and a pause on the other end. "Oh, uh," stammered Barbara, "then… Well. My dad's here to pick me up. School just ended. I'll...call you later?"

Dick didn't say anything. He only hung up, his fingerprint smeared onto his phone's screen cover with how hard he punched the End button.

He wanted to go to Barbara's house, he really did, but something in his gut was telling him not to.

"Master Richard?" Alfred called through the door. His knuckles rapped softly against the wood, and Dick hummed in response. He didn't expect Alfred to hear him. "Master Richard, I'm here to inform you that we seem to have missed your doctor's appointment to see how your medication has been doing. It has been rescheduled."

Dick shrugged to himself, pretending that Alfred could appreciate the reply. Alfred said no more, and Dick listened as the man's sharp footsteps echoed back down the hallway.

He wanted to get up, but something was holding him back. Something weighed him down and cemented his ankles to the floor. It made it so that he couldn't go to Barbara's, didn't think it was the right idea. It made it so he couldn't muster up the courage to simply project his voice so that Alfred knew that he was alive. It was frightening. What was it?

Alfred came in at half past six to place a plate of dinner on Dick's bedside table. Dick honestly had never seen the day coming when Alfred wouldn't drag him by his hair downstairs to eat, but the butler must have realised that making Dick move if he wanted to eat wouldn't work when Dick didn't want to eat. He felt cold sweat stick his shirt to his back as he closed his eyes and listened to Alfred adjust the sheets on his bed. In the last few hours, Dick had migrated to lying under his window in order to mess around with the loose threads of his curtains. There was a rush of irritation at the thought of anyone having the audacity to interrupt his peace. Though it had been days of laying there without speaking, he felt as though people were constantly disturbing him. The anger was uncalled for and that annoyed Dick, too, the idea that he was being unreasonable and that he knew it.

Alfred moved to leave, but he ended up loitering by the door instead. "Master Richard, please do get up," he asked. Dick had the strangest notion that it kind of sounded like he was begging. Dick took a deep breath, bracing himself for the effort needed to stand, before realising that he actually didn't care enough to do so.

"I will in a bit," he mumbled. "You can leave."

"I'll leave when I see that you've started eating your dinner," Alfred said sternly. "I didn't see any dent in last night's plate when I picked it up this morning. It took an hour of airing this room out for the stale smell to flee."

It took a few seconds of mental convincing, but Dick finally managed to take a deep breath and roll onto his feet. It was hard, as if something were trying to hold him down. He felt the effort cause another roll of sweat to crawl down his spine. He shakily walked over to his bed and sat heavily on his mattress, casting Alfred a pointed look. Alfred shot the look right back, and Dick resigned himself to the fact that he'd have to eat. He took a nauseating bite of meatball.

Alfred nodded and left. Dick put the fork back down and plopped onto his covers again, but swallowing the meat had awoken something in his stomach and his sudden appetite found him eating the rest of the plate. He didn't want to eat, the food tasted funny, but something in the back of his mind made him. The aftertaste stuck uncomfortably to his throat and on the tip of his tongue was a mysterious flavour which he couldn't pick out. Alfred's spaghetti had never tasted like that.

Looking at the medicine, he wanted to take it, but something stopped him. Controlled him. Forced him not to.

Dick credited that to the fact that he couldn't be bothered, and he soon fell into a fitful sleep.

He was awoken in the morning by Alfred, right as the sun was rising judging from the light streaming through the window. Dick only snapped awake easily because he had already awoken multiple times throughout the night. He blinked into full alertness the moment that he opened his eyes, right into Alfred's unreadable face. There was an expression there, but it was one that Dick couldn't decipher.

"You didn't take your medicine." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. Dick only stared at him, waiting for him to continue. Alfred's lips pursed disapprovingly. "You can't skip parts of your routine, or else your body will adjust poorly and you'll get sick again."

He always felt sick, so the news didn't feel like much to grieve over. Dick watched as Alfred placed two small tablets into his hand and gestured to the hot plate of breakfast sitting right where last night's dinner had sat. And the breakfast and dinner before that. Dick didn't even know what day it was anymore, and dinner still sat heavily at the bottom of his stomach. Dick heard the words before he realised that he was saying them. "I don't want to."

Alfred frowned. "Why is that?"

Dick stared intently at the tablets in his palm, as if his look alone could fry them. Sometimes he wished he were Superman. "I don't know."

"You can't not want to do something without a reason, Master Dick," Alfred advised patiently.

Frustrated, Dick harshly shoved the tablets onto the table. "I don't want to eat them." He glared at his breakfast. "Or that."

Alfred gently lifted Dick's fingers from the death grip he had on the table and laid them on the covers. "Master Bruce will permit you to visit Miss Barbara today if you take your medicine and eat your breakfast," he said, and at Dick's suspicious look added, "she called last night. I decided that it would do you good to go out."

"I don't want to go," insisted Dick. Alfred's movements slowed even more, if that were possible.

"I thought you wished to leave the manor? Is that not why you snuck out?"

"Not anymore."

"Why is that?"

"I just don't want to," Dick scowled. "Why is that so hard to understand?"

Alfred seemed startled by something and went silent for a few moments. Finally, he got up, patted the covers beside Dick's thigh, and left. He left the food and the medicine, too. In a strange feeling of guilt, Dick finally succumbed to taking the medicine a few hours later, the fact that he no longer saw Wally since first taking the medication proved that he needed it, but he regretted it the moment that it disappeared down his throat.

The very smell of his breakfast made him feel sick, and when he looked at the seemingly innocent scrambled eggs, he could only remember the suspicious ingredient that he had tasted from dinner. He thought that he could still taste it on his tongue through a disgusting layer of saliva, but it didn't taste like anything that he could identify.

Bruce was in his room by half past noon. Dick was instantly alert. "Why aren't you at work?" he demanded, straightening up as the strangest rush of adrenaline coursed steadily through his veins. What was the man doing there? It was unlike Bruce. It was unlike Bruce's schedule. There was no reason for Bruce's schedule to be interrupted.

"Eat your breakfast," he demanded. Dick couldn't tell whether or not it was unkindly, but it didn't settle well with Dick. It was Dick's health, not Bruce's. Why would Bruce be so adamant about Dick eating food? There had to be a reason. There was a reason for everything.

Maybe it was the strange ingredient Dick had tasted earlier. Maybe Bruce was putting something into his food. "No," he snapped quickly as the thought sent a fresh wave of panic through him. His eyes were blown wide and Bruce faltered in his steady pace towards Dick's bed.

"Yes," Bruce persisted, standing awkwardly in front of his ward. "And then you're going to Barbara's house. I already called the Commissioner and he's coming to pick you up."

"Why? You didn't want me going anywhere before," Dick claimed as he began to backpedal on his sheets to the other end of the bed. Bruce firmly grabbed his foot and dragged him back, but that only caused Dick to kick towards his face with his other foot on reflex. Bruce's other hand grabbed that, too. The man let both feet drop and stared at Dick with a scrunched face.

"Because you were grounded. Now I'm starting to feel like grounding you was what you wanted. It's getting unhealthy," Bruce stated factually.

"What do you want from me, then?" Dick exclaimed. "I don't listen to you, I get taken away from my friends. I listen to you, I get punished. I'm honest with you, you think I'm crazy. I lie to you and the cycle begins again!" Could Dick really get nothing right? Is that what the strange ingredient was for, and why Bruce wanted him to eat his food so badly? Clearly, Bruce didn't want Dick around if all he did was shut Dick up in the manor and away from the world. And right then, the one day that Bruce was home, he didn't want Dick in the manor with him, so he was sending Dick away for the day. Bruce wanted to get rid of Dick. It was the only explanation. The ingredient was something to shut Dick up, to make sure that he didn't bother Mr. High-And-Mighty Bruce Wayne. Maybe it was sleep medication. Maybe it was poison.

"You're over-exaggerating," Bruce scowled.

Maybe Dick wasn't going to Barbara's at all. Maybe Bruce was sending him far, far away. Good thing that he hadn't eaten the breakfast. "Yeah? How? How am I over-exaggerating?" Why did he suddenly have so much energy? Did the thing in the food make him tired? Is that what was causing him to be so lethargic? "And why don't you take me to Barbara's yourself, huh? Why aren't you at work?"

"I have work to do here. Work that doesn't require Bruce Wayne," insisted Bruce. "The Commissioner offered to take you to their house." Bruce was growing steadily frustrated, and Dick knew it. He knew it and that only fueled his own panic.

"We have a butler for that," he glared suspiciously.

"Jim insisted. Practically begged. Now eat, or you're going to get sick. Didn't Miss. Frances say that you can't have medicine on an empty stomach?"

"What do you know about what Miss. Frances said? You've never been there," Dick spat.

Bruce frowned, the breakfast plate clutched in his white knuckled grip. Finally, he forcibly attempted to relax, dropping his shoulders. He didn't seem to succeed. "Fine," he relented. "I'll make sure to tell Jim to feed you," he mumbled with a huff of impatience, leaving without another word.

With an air of irony, the door shut softly behind him. Dick reached for his phone and fiddled around with Pandora, closing his eyes as the alarmingly loud blast of music drowned his ears.

His door was slammed open thirty minutes later, causing Dick to fall in surprise onto the ground from where he was practicing a yoga pose on the edge of his bed. "Dick!" was the exclamation as a firm hand shot out and hauled him up.

"Hey, Babs," Dick greeted neutrally, attempting to recover from the scare as the girl practically draped herself over his shoulders. He felt a rush of annoyance flood through him.

"You're such a dick!" she said, irritated. "You're picking yoga over me now? Come on, my annoying neighbour has been trying to convince me to play soccer with him for hours and I need an excuse not to. Having to play hostess for a billionaire playboy philanthropist's ward will have to suffice." Dick wondered why everyone was fighting for his attention that day, but he had no room to protest as he was quite literally dragged downstairs, only leaving time for him to grab his phone and turn off his station.

Dick had been apprehensive when he had approached the front door to the manor, fully expecting to see a van and suddenly find that a rag was being stuffed over his nose. Nothing of that sort had happened. Instead, he had been greeted by the waving and smiling face of Gotham's police commissioner.

By the time they had reached the Gordon residence, he had already flown through millions of possibilities as to why things had not turned out the way he had thought they would. Bruce wanted to get rid of Dick. That much he was certain of. Bruce was slipping something into Dick's food to make him quiet and compliant, and Alfred was possibly in on it because he was the one who gave Dick his food. But, instead of sending Dick far away to who knew where, he sent Dick to Dick's best friend's house (the only best friend he had left, at least. He never saw Wally anymore, so the medication had to be working. Which meant that Wally had never been real after all). It either meant that the Gordon family knew about Bruce's plan and were going along with it, or they knew of his plan and were trying to protect Dick. Except, if they were trying to protect Dick, they would tell Dick about it, so they were probably going along with it.

And that was what made his heart thump in anxiety as he remembered Bruce saying that the commissioner would make him food. He was right to be anxious when he walked through the front door and was assaulted with the smell of casserole cooking in the kitchen.

"Mmm, that smells good," Barbara said with excitement. Jim was close behind the two of them with an appreciative head nod.

"Dinner at 2? That's different," he commented.

Barbara patted Dick on the back in response. "Well, Dick's here, isn't he? Everything's different when he's here. It's great." Dick stiffened. He wondered how different things were when he wasn't there.

Five minutes later, everyone was gathered around the coffee table in the living room. Mrs. Gordon had tried persuading them to the dining table, but Jim was insistent that Dick was familiar enough with the house and the family to not need to bother with manners reserved for dinner parties. "Want some bread?" Barbara mumbled through a mouthful of dinner roll, and Dick was about to refuse until he realised that she was eating bread from the same basket and cautiously took one for himself.

"How about some dinner?" Jim chuckled, and Dick froze as he glanced sheepishly down at his empty plate. The policeman leaned over and whispered loudly: "Might want to grab some quick before my wife comes back in. At least that way you can actually choose for yourself how much you want."

"I heard that," the wife in question called, and Dick hurriedly began shuffling food onto his plate, much to Barbara and Jim's amusement.

He didn't really eat much, mostly playing around by ripping off bits of bread to eat in order to stall. In fact, Dick still felt a wave of paranoia every time a bread piece touched his tongue. He had never had Mrs. Gordon's cooking before, and that went for what sort of bread she bought. He couldn't tell if anything was sprinkled on it because he didn't know how it normally tasted, but it was probably the safest thing on the menu considering it was easier to tell if anything had been added to dinner rolls rather than something with lots of added spices.

"Dick? Are you going to eat?" Mrs. Gordon's concerned voice came from where she sat on the couch that had Dick's back to it. Dick froze as the other two participators of eating paused to look on curiously.

"Uh, I'm not really hungry," Dick mumbled.

Jim frowned. "Bruce said that you haven't eaten today," he pointed out, but Dick had the feeling that it was more so directed at his wife than Dick. Dick's palms began to sweat. It was a problem that Dick hadn't eaten because it meant that he hadn't ingested whatever poison was contaminating his food. He was about to congratulate himself on trusting his gut and not eating the food until Barbara nudged him with a worried look, and his momentary lapse in judgement figured that Barbara wouldn't let him be poisoned. Barbara was his new best friend.

Dick gave an apologetic smile to Mrs. Gordon and took a bite of the casserole. He concentrated so hard on the individual flavours that he didn't even register when everyone had started talking again. At first, he was overwhelmed from mentally categorising so many different tastes, but when he finally swallowed the food and sorted the aftertaste, he knew that he recognised the mystery flavour again.

He wanted his old best friend back.

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 **What's being put in Dick's food? Is Bruce doing it? Is Alfred? Is the Commissioner? What about Mrs. Gordon? Is it sleeping medication? Is it poison? Is Barbara trying to kill Dick? What's going on here?!**


	12. Chapter 12

**And here's part 2! I wasn't able to post yesterday because I went to a camp, but I'm back now and ready to write. I got hit to hard with a plot bunny, so another story may pop up at some point, depending on whether or not I decide to write the whole thing out before posting again.**

 **I hope you enjoy!**

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It took five hours after dinner for Barbara to know that something was up. Actually, Dick figured that it probably took no time at all, but it took five hours for her to have had enough of it and point it out.

They were in Barbara's room, a place akin to a maze with all the knickknacks strewn about. Dick didn't mind, though. The only part of her room that actually gave him frustration were the Batman and Robin newspaper clippings acting as posters, and her sticky notes explaining what she knew about them and what she assumed because she had apparently made it her life goal to find out their identities. Dick had to give it up to her, she had a lot of points spot on. She had even documented, to the best of her abilities, Robin's 'activity rates' and figured out that Robin probably joined some sort of team or club separate from Batman. Freaky, but neat.

At least, that's what he used to think, until he realised that she was probably watching him, in which case she would soon find out that he was Robin, and then everything would go to hell. Dick didn't like the thought of being watched. He felt prickles travel down his back at the idea.

Dick was buzzing with nervous, dreadful energy. He kept himself up and active, finding things around the room to play with, making sure that he stayed on his feet. They had just migrated to her room after having played soccer with the neighbours for four hours. If Dick's theory was correct and Bruce really was slipping sleep drugs and/or poison into his food, and the Gordons were in on it and had done the same, then that meant that Dick was going to start feeling sleepy and eventually pass out. He couldn't let that happen. He didn't know what would happen if he did.

"Come off of it already," Barbara groaned uselessly. "You're acting really weird."

Leave it to Barbara for tact. "I've been acting weird for a long time now, remember?" Dick said breathlessly as he bounced on the balls of his feet, having run out of things to do. He was debating whether or not to start cleaning Barbara's floor, but he didn't want to turn his back to her. After all, she apparently encouraged the act of poisoning him. He felt that he owed her the benefit of the doubt, but he also took note of how much she had pestered him about his condition over the weeks, and knew that it was very likely for her to be conspiring against him. He kept one eye on the door.

Barbara frowned. "Yeah, but like...sad weird, not bouncy I'm-a-happy-camper weird."

Dick only shrugged, and felt a little thankful when Jim Gordon knocked on the door softly and peered in at Barbara's acknowledging call. He said something, but Dick wasn't paying attention, more focused on the traffic that could be seen through the window. He refused to let Jim know that he knew that something was up.

The door shut, snapping Dick back to attention. "My mom made sandwiches. Want me to go get some for us?" Barbara asked.

"No," Dick said, and Barbara frowned at him from her position at the door. "I don't want one."

"Yeah, you do," Barbara insisted, leaving him no room to respond as she walked down the hallway. Dick sat on the covers of her bed and bounced his leg anxiously as he awaited her return.

As promised, she brought him a delicious looking sandwich. There were two tablets beside it, given by Jim who was given them by Bruce, according to Barbara. As expected, Dick didn't eat a bite, but he did take the medicine.

As unexpected, Barbara yawned an hour later. Then, she grinned. "Hey, want to have a sleepover?" she asked. They both sat with their backs to her bed, searching hard for the weirdest titled YouTube videos to watch. Dick tried to keep as far away from her as possible, making sure he was the one closest to the door and not in the corner, and laughed whenever Barbara laughed even though he found nothing particularly funny. His heart was beating a mile a minute and he just wanted to leave, but Bruce would probably try to poison him again if he went home earlier than when Bruce called. He would have to sit vigil without letting anyone know that he was on to them.

It wasn't unusual for Dick and Barbara to have sleepovers. The Gordon parents approved of Dick, apparently, and though they didn't necessarily approve of Barbara sleeping over with boys in general, if she was going to sleep with anyone they must have decided that Dick was the best choice. Fortunately for them, Dick didn't think he and Barbara had any romantic attachments, unless Barbara loudly claiming her bed and shoving Dick to the floor in the opposite corner of the room was supposed to be flirtatious.

No, the weirdest thing about the request was the time. It was almost eight o'clock. Only eight. And Barbara was yawning. Dick's eyes widened as he stared at Barbara in horror. Her smile fell and she paled in alarm. "What?" she asked. "We've had sleepovers before."

"Why are you tired?" Dick demanded.

"Uhh, dad was called in at like, 2 A.M. last night," she answered, her voice pitching high at the end to show her discomfort.

Dick's nerves were starting to fray. "Why didn't you go back to sleep?"

"You know how it is. I was staying awake until he got home, but then Alfred said that you agreed to come over," she said boldly, and Dick barely bothered to take note of her defensive posture. "Dude, what's up?"

"The food," Dick hissed quietly, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice, but it was difficult. His excitement was fear driven, but it was also driven by the fact that he didn't feel as empty and painfully betrayed as he had minutes before. Betrayed as he had for the entire day, because he had thought that one of his closest friends was in on a conspiracy that might have end up with him killed. No, she wasn't in on it, she was a victim of it. Just like Dick.

"The food?" Barbara glanced over to Dick's sandwich laden plate on her computer desk, right beside her own polished one. "Er, if you're really that hungry, it is yours."

Dick viciously shook his head and jumped off the bed. Barbara watched as he grabbed the full plate, and he heard her squeak in alarm as he angrily dumped it into the garbage - plate and all. "Did you just break our plate?" she demanded, anger leaking into her voice. "Hey, answer me!" She shifted on the floor, placing the open laptop with its multitude of YouTube tabs on her bed covers.

Dick shushed her frantically, waving his palms to drive his point across. Barbara looked every bit alarmed at his behaviour, shooting to her feet, but Dick was already by her side and guiding her onto the bed with a tug of her sleeve. He pushed the laptop to make room for himself so hard that it slipped through the crack between the bed and the wall, closing shut in the process, and yanked Barbara back when she lunged for it with a yelp. She shook her arm, eyes widening in shock at the amount of strength that he possessed. "Let me go!" she exclaimed, and Dick promptly did so, pulling his fingers through his hair as she set her laptop gently on her desktop. With a wide eyed stare at him, she scooted her way to the other end of the bed, nearest the door. "What the hell?" she said, just as loudly.

"The food!" Dick repeated. "It's poisoned!"

"What?" Barbara was freaked out. Dick could understand that. He tried to calm her down, because he knew what that panicked feeling was like. He had been feeling it not hours before. Dick worked to soften his voice, demonstrating for Barbara to do the same.

"They keep slipping something, this ingredient, to make us sleepy. Compliant," he elaborated, his breaths escaping in puffs.

Barbara's mouth opened uselessly, her eyebrows furrowed into a mean and confused glare. It took her a second to form words. "Who?" she demanded.

"Bruce. And Alfred. And I think they got your parents into it, because I could taste it at dinner, and-" Dick began to ramble.

"I didn't taste anything," interrupted Barbara.

"Because you don't know what it tastes like! But I do, and I could tell-"

Barbara squeezed her eyes tightly shut and took a deep breath as Dick continued to talk. "Dick. Why would they do that?" she said, a forced calm tainting her every word.

Dick floundered aimlessly for a moment, trying to conjure up a response that made sense. "Bruce, he- he doesn't want me around. I know he doesn't and you probably don't know why, but some things have been happening-"

"Like what? Dick," Barbara demanded boldly, her hands reaching up to squeeze at his shoulders. "What's been happening?"

"Things. You have to believe me on this, Barbara. Bruce doesn't want me around, he wants to get rid of me, and he knows that I can't survive without food."

"And you think he's poisoning you to get rid of you?" she hissed. "Dick, if he wanted to get rid of you, which he doesn't, he wouldn't do it with poison. Bruce is a lot of things, but he isn't a murderer. He isn't even your father, by adoption or by birth. He could just give you up to the authorities."

He wasn't a murderer, but he was close enough. Unfortunately, Barbara didn't know that. She didn't know what Dick knew. "It would look bad for him," Dick countered.

"And having a kid under his guardianship die _wouldn't_?" hissed Barbara. "And why would he want to poison _me_?"

Dick didn't have a prepared answer for that. He didn't have a solid, real answer to any of it. But he was trained. He was trained, and he knew what he was doing, but Barbara wasn't trained so she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know what she was up against. He did. It was his job to protect her. "You probably weren't supposed to eat the food, you-"

"These are my parents you're talking about!" Her voice rose so suddenly that Dick's neck jolted back. It was his turn to be alarmed, and his first instinct was to listen for footsteps in the hall. "I don't know Bruce, but I know my parents, and they're _not_ trying to _kill us._ Stop and think, Dick! What's _wrong_ with you?"

"Then they were bribed! Bruce is the richest man in Gotham, he has all the money that they could possibly-"

Dick was cut off as he was suddenly shoved backwards off of the bed. His arms instinctively shot up over his head, and he landed half off the edge of the mattress in an awkward handstand, before fluidly transitioning by launching himself with his arms into a backflip and landing on his shaky legs, just as he had done millions of times before.

Barbara went dead silent at the spectacle.

Both of their panting breaths hung heavy in the air. The silence was only broken by a car horn from the traffic outside, and that was what must have snapped Barbara back to reality, because she sprang to her feet and bolted for the door. Dick was faster. He glued his back to it, arms sprawled out to either wall. "No!" he exclaimed. "It doesn't matter whether or not you believe me, I still need to protect you!"

"Protect me?" Barbara croaked. "You're-you're-insane! You're freaking _insane_!"

"You can't go out there!"

"You're not the boss of me! Let me through!"

"No!"

"Barbara? Dick?" a panicked, alarmed voice echoed from the hall, and Dick cursed under his breath because he had been neglecting to keep their voices down. Barbara took a deep breath, so Dick promptly stuck one hand out to cover her mouth. The bone of his palm accidentally crashed into her nose, though, and Barbara stumbled back with a pained moan. Her nose was dripping blood when Dick's hand dropped as she fell out of range.

Dick's heart practically stopped, and he felt an overwhelming guilt crash over him. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean- I'm so sorry-"

Barbara used his momentary paralysis to jump for the door, causing Dick to slam himself back against it again, and the voice of Mrs. Gordon to let out a surprised shout. Jim Gordon's voice joined hers. "What's going on in there?" he boomed.

Dick couldn't do anything when the door was opened from the other side. He tried to hold it in place, but the door opened outwards, and Dick was forced to jump forward or fall back onto the Gordons as it swung open with a strong pull from the Commissioner.

Barbara darted past all of them so quickly that it took Dick a second to recover. Only a second, because then he was trying to run after her, until Mr. Gordon shoved himself in Dick's way. He grabbed Dick's flailing arms until Dick was sure that there would be bruises. "Dick, what's wrong?" he asked frantically.

"He needs help!" Barbara's distressed cry echoed from upstairs. Dick felt his chest ignite with something buried deep, something hurt and angry and betrayed all over again.

Wally wouldn't say that Dick needed help.

Or maybe Wally would. Who knew? It didn't matter, anyway.

But then the feeling of fear finally hit Dick as he realised that he couldn't immediately escape Mr. Gordon's hold without possibly breaking his own arms. He automatically kicked out, landing a foot square on the man's shin. "Let me go!" he shouted, anxious, attempting to shoot past the cop. Mr. Gordon let out a pained groan and fell forward, releasing one arm, but he didn't let the other go. Dick needed to get to Barbara. He needed to get to her, because she was both a victim and a witness, and if Dick was left alone with Mr. and Mrs. Gordon with no one there to watch, then he would surely be killed. They were just waiting for the right opportunity to take him down, after all.

He felt a little like a gazelle in a lion's den, knowing the intentions of the predators surrounding him, but not knowing their thoughts. He knew of the endgame, but not the journey.

"Why?" Dick screeched in anguish as Mr. Gordon finally began an attempt to restrain him. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you need to calm down," Mr. Gordon said as calmly as he could, which was close to not at all. He held both of Dick's wrists in one hand and drew his other arm around the top of Dick's back, trying to glue the boy to his chest. But Mr. Gordon's comfort wasn't what would calm Dick down. Mr. Gordon needed to get as far away from him as possible to calm him down.

"Not this!" the boy continued. "Why are you trying to hurt me? Why do you want to get rid of me?" His heart beat fast and painful, aching against his ribcage and lungs. Mr. Gordon was so stunned that he stopped momentarily in his movements, allowing Dick to twist his arms up in just the right way to slide out of the man's grip. He jumped back and plastered himself to the wall, which probably wasn't the best idea, but he didn't know what else to do. If he ran the other way, he would corner himself in the dining room, and Mr. Gordon was blocking the way to the hallway's exit. Smart man.

Mr. Gordon gaped, and Dick shuddered. That was right, he thought. Dick was on to him. That was right.

"Dick, what are you talking about?" Mr. Gordon asked, his confusion softening his voice.

"You and Bruce and everyone!" Dick yelled, and he thought that he should really have stopped talking, because he was giving away all the information that he knew. He was giving them a reason to kill him. To get rid of him. He knew who they really were, and what their intentions really were. "I know what you're trying to do!"

"What are Bruce and I trying to do?" Mr. Gordon demanded. Dick wasn't going to fall for it. He wasn't going to allow the Commissioner to milk information out of him as the man did with criminals. Mr. Gordon stepped forward.

Dick stumbled back, and something dropped onto the floor with a crash. A glass object, by the sharpness of the shatter. He grabbed the closest thing that he could, a dining chair, and held it out between him and the Commissioner. When the Commissioner managed to grab the leg, he panicked and threw it at the man, knowing that Mr. Gordon would duck and that might give Dick a chance to escape. The wood crashed loudly onto the wall behind Mr. Gordon, beside the kitchen entrance, where Mrs. Gordon yelped and clutched her landline.

A wave of guilt crashed over Dick again, but not for the broken furniture. The guilt was because he felt no guilt at all for his behaviour. He was causing the Gordons difficulty. But that was good, because once they grabbed him, it was all over. He attempted darting past Mr. Gordon again, but his arm was caught by the man and he crashed into the window of the wall above the kitchen sink instead, knocking over the clay plants there and a basket of strawberries. Mrs. Gordon jumped back as the clay shattered in the sink, splattered with the red of organic fruit. Mr. Gordon pressed him down with his arm twisted behind his back and Dick finally fell limp, sliding down the wall when Mr. Gordon released in surprise until Dick could curl in on himself. He was trapped. "Don't kill me," he whimpered, because what did it matter? They knew that he knew.

Dick felt like he had never trained at all. He couldn't remember anything. Even when he was confronting the Joker, he could remember what he had been taught, Bruce's commands whispering softly into his ears as a backdrop to the chaos. But at that moment, with no trust in Bruce, no trust in what he knew, there was nothing. He brought his arms up into an X to shield his head, like a helpless victim.

Then there was Mr. Gordon still standing there. He was whispering meaningless nothings in Dick's ears, muttering, sometimes grasping Dick's shoulders tightly and demanding something of him, but Dick had already begun blocking it out. He could feel himself begin to tremble, the hairs of his thighs standing on end and scraping against the uncomfortable denim of his jeans. Every part of his body was sensitive, yet numb. The sounds of sirens outside blurred with the sounds of Mrs. Gordon in the kitchen saying something into the landline and with the sight of Barbara peering down through the railing of the stairs.

And as Dick was dragged out by unfamiliar strangers, bewildered and betrayed and afraid, with Mr. and Mrs. Gordon yelling something in front of him, he saw Barbara run down. She stayed a few feet back on the front lawn, though not particularly by her own will because a man that Dick didn't recognise had a hand on her shoulder.

Her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes cried and she mouthed, "Who are you?"

* * *

 **Woah, wait, what?**

 **My beta reader got confused about the ending, so to clarify, Mrs. Gordon called the authorities and Dick was dragged away. Barbara doesn't know who he is anymore - to her, he's gone completely out of his mind for no reason and somehow managed to learn how to do a back flip. If my skinny nerdy friend knew how to back flip out of nowhere, too, I'd have a heart attack.**


	13. Chapter 13

"When I said to help your fucking kid, this wasn't what I had in mind!"

Wally jumped, startled at the booming and reverberating voice of his uncle as the ghost appeared in the middle of the Allen residence's dining table. He frowned, curious and with a stone sized weight of dread sinking in his gut as he slinked forward into the living room, as if Barry would somehow be interrupted if he just pranced in. Iris had her head ducked purposefully on the couch, concentrating completely on her laptop as she began typing what was probably a report for the next day's paper.

Wally was unnerved that Barry was actually shouting and, by Iris' miniscule winces, she was uncomfortable, too.

"What do you mean? Of course he was acting strangely - he was _locked_ in his _house._ " A tense pause, then, "Oh, and you don't think that might have been your fault? Look, I get that you're not the most ideal father figure, but you've been pushing him way too hard. Yes! Yes, that has everything to do with why he reacted like that. You're way too paranoid, Bruce, and you passed it on to him! I'm pretty sure thinking everyone is trying to kill you is part of the membership."

Alarmed, Wally ran as fast as his dead-now-human legs would allow, pressing himself as close as possible to the speaker of Barry's cell phone. He could barely make out Bruce's words:

"What was I supposed to do, Allen? If I let him go back to school, he might have had another attack. If I let him outside, he would have wanted to go in costume. If I let him in costume, he could have easily gotten himself killed - he was way too distracted. He was acting weird before he went to the Commissioner's house, the school wouldn't have even let him come back until he got properly medicated, and even then he was acting strange. What, exactly, do you think I should have done differently?" Bruce sounded angry, in his cold and calculated sort of way. Wally found that odd, because as Batman, Bruce would easily let his anger out in a burst of explosion, but as Bruce Wayne he seemed to lock himself into a little emotionless box. Wally used to think that it was the other way around.

But the part that was alarming Wally most wasn't Bruce's behaviour, even though that was odd. It was the topic of the conversation, the fact that they could have only been talking about Dick, and that was reason in of itself to be concerned. Wally knew that Dick was missing school. He knew that he wasn't allowed to go outside. But medicated? With what medication? Wally thought that he had only spent a few days at the park, but with a quick glance at Iris' computer screen, he realised that he was far off.

It had been weeks.

A cold shudder worked its way down Wally's spine. If time passed so easily for ghosts, it was no wonder that they were rumoured to stay around for centuries without even realising it. Was that what would become of him? A sad ghost lost in the passing of time?

Was he made to wander alone forever?

"Are you serious?" Barry was saying. "I don't know, maybe talk to him? Ask him what was wrong?"

And Bruce was responding before Barry had even finished: "That's his therapist's job. If he can barely talk to Miss. Frances, what makes you think he'd talk to me?"

"You're the closest person in his life! Practically the only person he has left. He's survived this long without a father, you're right, but that's because he'd always had his best friend. He needs a friend, Bruce, not a dictator."

Normally, Wally would be cheering Barry on for how animatedly he was calling Bruce out on all of the things that the World's Greatest Detective regularly missed, but Barry didn't get angry easily. Sure, the argument was long overdue, but Barry had as much reason to say his thoughts before as he did right then. The only reason Barry would be so intense at that moment was if something had happened.

And given the topic of the conversation, that something had happened to Dick.

"What's done is done, Barry," Bruce sounded drained. It was the first time Wally had ever heard him call Barry by his first name. "I don't have any concrete reason to take him out. It wasn't even my choice to put him there in the first place. Do you think I want him anywhere near the real crazies? Something went wrong, but I don't know what, and I can't do anything until I find out."

Barry took a deep breath, probably to still his nerves. Wally knew from experience just how easily already fast-moving nerves could get worked up. "I'm coming to Gotham."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am. You just said yourself that you need help investigating this."

"No, I didn't. You have a job and a life in Central, this is my city and my problem, I can do it on my own."

"Quit with the self-sacrificing bullshit, Wayne," Barry practically growled.

"There isn't any bullshit or self-sacrificing going on," Bruce barked back. "If I wanted metahumans here, I'd allow them here. But I don't. Metahumans are not allowed in Gotham, because if you guys start coming over here, either your villains are going to follow, or my human villains are going to start getting even bigger ideas. Let it go."

"And what? Leave Dick to rot in jail?" Barry sounded part worried and part terrified at the possibility.

"Insane asylum," corrected Bruce automatically.

"Is that supposed to be _better_?" snapped Barry in his mournful, near tears way.

Wally couldn't blame him. He wanted to shout, too. All he could do, though, was wait with bated breath for the name of the asylum, for at least the general area, something to give him an idea of where to go to find his best friend. His heart raced and his vision blurred with something like tears, though his eyes were dry. He didn't know what he'd do once he found Dick. He had no end goal in sight. But he felt responsible, and oh so guilty, and awful, and he needed to somehow set things right. If staring uselessly as Dick crumbled in front of him was the best that he could do, then he would do it for an eternity.

It was his fault that a woman had died under Dick's watch. Dick wouldn't die because of him, too.

Wally turned back to the computer screen on the couch as he heard the frantic clicking of Iris' computer mouse. She was opening up multiple tabs beside the latest news articles from her office, and Wally didn't think that was too healthy for the laptop considering she probably already had a dozen tabs up. But the second that she got to Google, Barry sent her a look, and Wally knew that look. It was a look of action.

Iris began typing.

Five minutes later, Wally had a list of "Top Ten Asylums and Jailhouses in Gotham" and was frantically trying to commit their addresses to memory when Iris scrolled down quickly to the very bottom of the list, where hyperlinked text with a bolded asterisk claimed, "Is Bruce Wayne's Ward Insane?"

If that wasn't the holy grail, Wally really didn't know what was. Iris clicked on the link faster than Barry probably could have, and within minutes Wally was chanting an address that he had never heard before over and over again. Barry angrily hung up the phone, though Wally had no longer been paying attention to the heated conversation that he had been having.

"Got it," Iris said unnecessarily. Barry snatched the piece of paper that she had written the address down upon. Iris didn't hesitate in snatching it back. "Where do you think you're going?" she demanded.

"Where do you think?" Barry replied, though instead of snapping it, he only succeeded in sounding bewildered and overwhelmingly upset.

"Bruce isn't going to appreciate you racing over there right now," she warned.

"Of course he isn't, but who cares? If he isn't taking action to get Dick back, I will."

Iris frowned. "Barry, I'm sure that he's doing everything that he can. He knows how Gotham works better than you do."

"All he cares about is the mission, not Dick," Barry responded.

"Dick _is_ the mission," reminded Iris. She was quiet for a moment, letting her words sink in. "Is this about Wally?"

Wally paused. Barry froze under Iris' intent look. "What?" Barry said, as Wally echoed the same word with him.

"You couldn't save Wally, so you want to save Dick to make up for it. To right a wrong," she stated, too calmly for the topic at hand.

Staring between his two former caretakers, Wally knew by Barry's wide eyed expression that Iris was right. But he didn't want to stay to hear the conversation out. He had had enough time to try and correct his own issues. At that moment, Dick needed him. Wally vanished, envisioning the old inner corridors of what the pictures on the website had promised.

* * *

Dick felt broken. Not metaphorically, not spiritually, but very literally broken. His limbs ached with soreness, his knee caps felt cracked with the way that he kept skidding them on the hard stone ground but showed no symptoms of being so, and his head throbbed. His skin was hot to the touch, feverish, and he was dizzy, but the woman in the white coat checked his temperature before throwing him into the cell that he sat and stated with an annoyed expression that he was _perfectly healthy_.

He didn't feel healthy.

Where was he? What time was it? Day? Where was everyone?

Did they lock him up, casting him aside for another day when they could properly deal with him? Was he there simply awaiting his demise? Should he stay or escape? Did they forget about him, and he was safe where he was? Would he be found if he got out?

He was safe where he was. Safe. Trapped. Safe. Imprisoned. Stuck. Stuck. Alone. Alone.

Sick. Ill. _Perfectly healthy_.

Dick's back hit the brick wall before he knew that he had moved, and his breaths stuttered raggedly. There was something to his right. A bed bolted to the ground. There was a toilet, too, seat cracked-cracked, made of-something sh- it was sharp. Sharp. Weapon if he needed it?

No. Bolted, too. Smart guards. Experience taught them.

How did he know that?

No window. Time of day. What was the time of day? Why did he need the time of day?

How long-how. How. How what?

Brick digging into his back. Where was his shirt? His shirt wasn't white. It was too thin. Too thin. He was too cold. Walls were too thick.

There were voices. Coming from where? They said nothing. Nothing. But they were there. Static, pushing, pushing at his aching, aching head. From outside. Inside? Outside and inside and all around, he-

Two white tablets, pushing into his palm. Time was all meshed together. But it felt that once he was finally swallowing the tablets, was forced to swallow the tablets, choke them down with his jaw clenched in bony white fingers, gurgling his spit and trying to fit them correctly in his throat and choking, sputtering, don't want to swallow, what if they'll kill him- He felt that once he finally swallowed the tablets, shuddered as they scraped their way down to his stomach, shook with what they could entitle, he was suddenly being forced to do it all over again.

Again. Again. All over again. It was a never-ending cycle, and he didn't want to eat, because if Bruce wanted him dead then the rest of them did, too, all of the voices passing down the corridors, all of them, and what if the food was safe and he got used to it but then one day, they realised why feed him, why do any of it, they should just get it over with-

He didn't want to eat. They didn't make him. At least, not until the 9th medication cycle, when his stomach was eating itself and he shook with any sort of movement, he puked his own spit, and it was the 5th medication cycle of not drinking, his tongue was heavy and dry and his throat felt cracked like sunbaked pavement and when they forced him onto his back, held him down unnecessarily, his head spun and he wanted to turn over and heave. Everything felt wrong and he was too hot and he was too cold and he was too ill and too perfectly healthy. The liquid that poured over his lips was icky warm and frustratingly refreshing but there was a taste there, just a little taste, he could taste it with the back of his tongue, just a hint of it, there was something in the water, he knew that there was something in it- Dick would keep smacking his lips, long after they were gone, trying to recreate the taste until all he could taste was the blood from his cut lip.

Dick was so exposed when he was held down that way, his arms splayed and shoulders burning as they dug into the stone beneath, his shoulder bones sharp and painful. There were so many ways that he could be murdered and no one would ever know.

Choke him. Slice a knife across his jugular. Across his femoral artery. Between his ribs. Into his liver. Into-

He would thrash, sometimes. When he had enough energy.

It's why they wrapped him up in the too thin shirt.

It was a weird shirt. It was a familiar shirt, and Dick was horrified at first, disgusted and afraid because he thought that maybe he had seen it on the Joker before, was he wearing the Joker's shirt? Had they washed it? Was he covered in the Joker's sweat, and oh god there the Joker was, standing on the other side of the small tiny bars guarding the small tiny window on the big, big door. The Joker was laughing, and it was getting louder, and closer, and then the Joker was inside the cell, he was with Dick, and then the Joker had red hair and green eyes and ghostly skin and he was floating, Dick didn't know that the Joker could float, but then it wasn't the Joker at all, it was _Wally._

And Dick was moaning, only because he felt too weak to scream. Wally's voice arrived in fragments, disoriented fragments, chips of a delusion, but he didn't disappear or melt into something else as had all the others. He was shaking his palms and he looked frantic, he wasn't laughing and he didn't necessarily seem terrifying, so Dick stopped moaning but he did keep shaking and shuddering with wide eyes and parted lips and tears.

What happened next was: "Dick, godgodgod-" and, "Lemme get you out of here, how to get you out of here-" and, "What's wrong? Jesus Christ, why'd they put you here?"

Dick was blubbering, trying to explain, trying to make sense of it all. "Tried to poison me," he said.

"Who? Why?"

"Bruce, and Gordon, Barbara needed protecting but she wouldn't let me, wouldn't believe me," and suddenly Dick was incoherent even to himself, but Wally seemed to understand. He seemed to get it. Until Dick didn't want him to understand, because Wally wasn't real. That was when Dick kicked and fell onto his back with a painful exhale of air, cold stone harsh to all of his sharp features. He tried rolling around, but that only pressed the hard ground into his bent arms and that also hurt, it hurt his stomach too, the way his elbows dug into it. It made his heart hurt and he was puking all over again.

Wally was muttering soft nothings. Dick couldn't feel Wally, Wally couldn't touch him, but while Wally's voice started out as angry static, it soon melted away into something like clear water, and if Dick concentrated on that surprisingly gentle voice, he felt that maybe, maybe, he could begin to sort his mind out.

He decided that it didn't matter if Wally wasn't real. Wally was the only thing that made sense anymore.

* * *

 **Hey, look! You guys should be happy! You've been asking me for chapters upon chapters to bring Wally and Dick back together. c: I've fulfilled your wishes, haven't I?**

 **Y'know, it's just that Wally can't do anything because he's a ghost, he's making Dick think he's even MORE insane, and Dick is basically being tortured. No biggy.**

 **Don'tkillme. (On that note, happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans?)**

 **Oh, but important question: Thoughts on Bruce? Still hate his guts?**

 **Thanks for reading and be sure to drop a few words on what you think!**


	14. Chapter 14

**I work at a tree lot and today, I was talking to a friend who works with me. He's one of my closest friends' little brother and I've known him for years, but today was the first time that I realised how much he looked exactly like Wally. And god, he sure does eat like a speedster. At least he unintentionally reminded me to update, but I apparently sell trees with Wally's doppelganger, and it was frustrating me all day because after having that thought, all I wanted to do was get home and write some more.**

 **On that note, I think this chapter might be satisfying to a few of you. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

Wally was pissed.

He had never known how frustrating it would be to not be able to touch his best friend when his best friend needed a touch to ground him the most. He had always taken small moments like that for granted, and right then there was nothing that Wally could do and nothing that he could have done. He had been forced to sit back and watch as Dick got sick on the floor, shook and shivered and cried and muttered nonsense and didn't look at all like himself. Wally really didn't know who he had been looking at.

There was something wrong with Dick. Wally knew that much was certain. But he had been so angry with Dick before, angry that Dick was ignoring him and then depressed that Dick was ignoring them and then guilty because Dick was no longer ignoring him, was pissed at him because he had caused someone's death, that he had paid no attention. He had paid no attention, creating the one thing that he probably feared the most.

He was such an ignorant hypocrite.

Wally was at a loss - that was, until the white coats entered. The nurses. A bulky man and a stone-faced woman holding a pill bottle. Dick stilled for a second, but then he started bucking, moving, rolling to the corner of the room, murmuring and whimpering for Wally. And Wally could only watch, gaping, protectively moving in front of his best friend as if that would do anything. It seemed to, at first. Dick seemed to physically calm down, no longer twitching, only gulping in air as if every breath would be his last. Until the nurses moved unfalteringly through Wally. That was when Dick started to panic, breathing out Wally's name, and the female nurse stilled disapprovingly. The man looked at her.

"Maybe we should increase the dosage."

The woman scowled. "He was due for it, anyway."

And Wally was even angrier. He felt like he was on fire with fury, and he yelled at them, going so far as to try and grab for the man's coat as he moved to hold Dick down. The woman shook three pretty little tablets into her palm and multiple larger pills of assorted colours.

"Stop!" Wally screeched, because that wasn't right, but to no avail. He didn't know what was in that medication, but he would bet a pretty penny that it was nothing good. He would bet another pretty penny that it had something to do with Dick's sporadic behaviour as the acrobat pressed himself desperately against the floor, as if the ground would suddenly give way and swallow him up.

Wally wondered briefly if Dick wanted to disappear as much as Wally wanted to appear.

Wally could only watch as they forced Dick down and held his jaw so tightly that Wally didn't doubt there would be bruises. He was standing behind the adults, could only see the bony bend of their spines and Dick's bare feet as he kicked uselessly, but he could still hear the gurgle of Dick's mouth as the pills and tablets were forced down. He felt sick, as if he were the one getting pills shoved down his throat, because like hell if his stomach wasn't swirling in nausea and a lump wasn't forming in his airway.

He thought that Dick might have tucked the pills beneath his tongue, behind his teeth, like he did many missions before. But when the woman stepped back, Wally could see that he hadn't as she dragged Dick up by his jaw and yanked open his mouth, examining every crevice, before abruptly dropping him. He crumbled in a moaning mess as the adults left the room with a loud bang of the door.

When Wally shakily stepped forward, the room suddenly more blurry than it had been before, and called Dick's name softly, all he got in response was a traumatised gasp of air as Dick squeezed his eyes shut and curled in tighter on himself.

There was nothing that he could do to help Dick right then. If anything, Dick would be more horrified at Wally's presence than anything else. He wasn't right in the mind. Wally knew that then. His best friend was ill.

But he could try to fix it. Even if it was only trying.

That was why Wally stormed back to the house. He didn't know what he intended to do, but his grief and his thoughts occupied only by memories of the Dick he knew from before sent him hurtling back into the Allen household within seconds, but not where he normally would appear. What faced him wasn't the dining room table, or the kitchen cabinets. It was his old hand-me-down television set from his late grandfather. It was his bed with its still unmade sheets, as if everything were perfectly good and normal, but all it gave Wally was the echo of a haunted feeling.

He hadn't dared venture back into his room. He couldn't handle the thought that everything might have been packed away and forgotten, or sold, or worse. Worse like the way that it actually sat, as if Wally were about to burst through the front door at any given moment and say something witty that Barry could actually hear before racing into his room, where Dick would already be sitting with a bowl of chips and an hour the way into their impromptu Modern Warfare binge.

Everything was just how he had left it, when he had still had the intention to go back.

Wally was spinning around slowly, taking in the entire state of the room, when he heard the scrape of something sliding against worn carpet and the soft thunk of an object being nudged by his foot. Startled, he backpedaled quickly into his dresser, his elbow colliding harshly with the small round knob of his underwear drawer. The mirror leaning precariously on top rattled.

The object sitting innocuously on the ground was an old game that he had dug up from the depths of his closet the last time that Dick had been over. Resident Evil 6, a gift from the billion-dollar acrobat for Wally's 11th birthday. Wally clearly remembered his excitement that day, when Dick had shyly handed it over as a peace offering because they had an argument the day before over something that Wally couldn't remember. Wally hadn't even questioned where an almost 10 year old had gotten it, and it was the first time that they had stayed up all night playing video games, where Wally pretended not to be scared and Dick pretended not to notice that Wally was pretending not to be scared.

And he had just touched it.

Speaking of which, he had also touched his dresser. Jumping back from that, Wally gave it a good once over. It had been a hand-me-down from Wally's grandfather, as had most things that Wally owned, since Wally's father hadn't cared enough to buy Wally actual belongings. Cautiously, skin radiating with excitement, heart thump-thumping in his chest, Wally opened the top drawer, relishing the feel of the cold metal knob sliding under the pads of his fingers. He reached his arm inside.

His hopes were dashed when his knuckles hit the bottom of the drawer, and when Wally peered into it with his eyes, he could clearly see the neatly folded shirts that his hand had gone straight through. Desperate for a touch of fabric, he swept his arm across the entire bottom of the drawer, and was rewarded when his fingers brushed the thread of wool at the very back. He quickly pulled out the deeply buried shirt, only to reveal the ugly handknit sweater that Iris had tried, and failed, to make appealing.

Hand-me-down, check. Homemade, check. Narrowing his eyes at the rest of his drawer, Wally cradled the sweater close to his chest. 'No' to everything bought.

He gently folded the sweater again and put it on his bed covers, which he couldn't touch, never thinking that he would ever have liked the itchy unravelling wool that had been Iris' Christmas creation. It was mind-bogglingly cliche.

If Wally still had superspeed, his limbs would have been vibrating in excitement. As it was, he was still shaking, his palms curiously sweaty despite the fact that Wally truly doubted that he had any working sweat glands, or sweat glands at all - maybe it went with the illusion of being solid. His heart was in his throat and he was so enthusiastic that he air-raced over and down the stairs, the memory of how his feet used to pound on the carpet reverberating in his ears, as he forgot that he could simply teleport to the ground floor. He burst into the kitchen. Barry was there, making a sandwich, and Iris had Legally Blonde turned all the way up in the living room.

He decided that there could be no harm in talking to himself. He needed some way to get rid of his energy, after all. "Guys! I can touch stuff! Isn't this freaking great?" he exclaimed as he skidded in front of the television, pretend-blocking Iris' view. "I almost forgot what metal feels like, and it's so smooth it's like, soft, or something. Have you guys ever noticed that? And dude, Iris, I have never been so grateful for an ugly cliche sweater in my entire life. You know, either itchy doesn't exist for dead nerves, or I'm special. I'm going with special. Makes me feel better about myself."

Wally didn't so much as pause before he transitioned into explaining away his plan. He was still angry, there was no denying that. He was happy that he could touch objects, but his happiness for feeling a sensation again was overrun by gladness that being able to move items made his plan to help his best friend a hundred times easier.

Dick had tried to get people to believe that Wally was real, and ended up in an insane asylum. It was Wally's turn to give it a shot.

"So, I'm going to start with my plan now, alright?" he said loudly, looking over in Barry's direction. "Soon enough, you're going to be making a second sandwich for me as a peace offering. Put it on my grave. Maybe I'll smell it or something," he continued plainly. Barry didn't react. Wally began walking upstairs, practically shouting, as if he could be heard over the sound of Reese Witherspoon being laughed at in a bunny costume. "Ready, set, action."

"Step 1," he narrated as he hopped into his room. "Collect necessary supplies." And so it went. Wally literally bulldozed his way around recklessly for whatever it was that smacked him in the face or caused him to trip. The pencil that he got for his birthday in German class, Resident Evil 6, his sweater, Barry's old tuxedo, curtains from his grandmother, the Solar System diorama that he made in sixth grade, and so-on-so-forth. Each and every one were gifts to Wally specifically, or made by him personally. They were things that belonged to Wally by permission of someone else, things that Wally had _owned_ while he had been alive. He dumped all of them outside of his door, continuously poking his head onto the stairs to check that no one was walking up them.

"Step 2: Arrange them accordingly," and when he was done with that, all of the ragtag objects organised into a neat mess, "Step 3: Summon the adults." He grabbed the cheap eagle trophy that he had gotten for Student of the Week in seventh grade, examined its flaking bad golden paint job, traced his outlined name on the plaque, and chucked it from the stair balcony.

It shattered on the hardwood behind the living room couch. Iris yelped and spun around, staring at the broken shards with wide eyes as Barry raced over. "What-" he began, before pausing. The two of them were silent as Wally's uncle moved to gently pick up the one part of the trophy still intact - its base, where Wally had traced his name moments before.

Wally's heart thump-thumped in anticipation.

"Did you-" started Barry as he turned to Iris. She shook her head before he finished.

"It wasn't anywhere near the railing. I kept it on Wally's desk," she said, voice admiringly steady though her eyes were wide with fright. Barry didn't hesitate a second in climbing the stairs.

"Who's there?" he demanded loudly, as Iris whispered to be careful. Wally shuffled nervously, holding his breath, feeling as if he were about to burst, as Barry reached the second floor.

The man completely froze as his eyes fell onto what Wally had laid out. Wally hurried to fill in the gap. "I'll clean it up later," he said weakly.

Barry began backing up, the opposite reaction from what Wally had intended, but wasn't able to get very far until he bumped into his wife, who had noticed from the lack of action that there probably wasn't an immediate threat. "God, God, Iris, somebody is trying- there's-" he gasped, and Wally was alarmed to see tears in his uncle's eyes. Iris was, too, though Wally couldn't decide whether that was from Barry's tears or from Wally's display.

"'Dick'," she said, reading the large letters that had been formed out of the random objects from Wally's room. She was trembling. Barry said nothing, just leaned heavily against the railing as if he were about to puke onto the living room below.

"Please don't call Ghostbusters," Wally hurried, out of ideas on what to say, even though he wasn't required to say anything at all.

Wally knew that he was definitely related to Iris when she said, "Out of all words to be spelled out on our floor, of course it's that one." Barry gave a weird huff of breath that Wally really couldn't identify as any particular emotion as the man hung his head, fingers clutching tightly at the wooden rail. He squeezed his eyes shut before finally pushing back from the stairs and turning back to Wally's creation. Barry was breathing heavily.

"Wally?" he asked hesitantly, and Wally was staring with apt suspense for a few more seconds before realising that he should probably have been doing something. He practically dived into the pile of objects as Barry began to turn away to look at Iris. The two adults jumped as Wally's possessions suddenly bent out of pattern, seemingly on their own. Iris finally started to cry as Barry ignored the liquid trickling down his own cheeks for favour of searching in vain around the room. He stepped forward and picked up Iris' sweater, rubbing his thumb over the wool. Iris cried harder.

Wally kneeled forward and took the other sleeve of the sweater that had been laying limp, lifting it from the ground. Barry's breath stuttered. "Wally? Jesus, Wally, are you really there? Oh Christ, I'm so sorry, so, so sorry."

"It's okay," Wally soothed, though it really wasn't.

There was silence for a few moments, the sweater quaking with Barry's shudders, whether from shock or fear Wally didn't know, until the speedster slowly stood up. "I need to talk to Bruce," he said as he passed Iris. At the top of the stairs, he pressed his ring and transformed into his costume before speeding away.

Wally quickly envisioned the nearest zeta tube and appeared in the alleyway just as Barry crashed into a trashcan. He briefly wondered if he should have found out a quick way to say goodbye to Iris, just in case she started talking to herself thinking that Wally was there, but figured that there was no time as Barry stepped into the telephone booth. Wally followed, and seconds later Barry was stepping out of the zeta tube into the Watchtower with an intent look on his face.

"Flash, 04," the machine droned. Wally watched, still perched beneath the beam, as the few faces within immediate hearing range turned their heads to watch in silent anticipation. One of the few faces included Bruce, who stilled in his movements of shuffling files in front of a large computer to watch Barry approach. Wally figured, by everyone's suddenly quietness, that Barry's presence was unusual, and Wally winced thinking about how he must have been the cause of that.

"We need to talk," Barry said sternly, almost coldly. He must have been trying to steel his features in order to force Bruce to hear him out before making a judgement on Barry's news. That was when Wally decided to step out from beneath the tube, intending to eavesdrop on the oncoming conversation.

If he had thought that the room had been awkwardly still before, it was nothing compared to when the machine belatedly declared, "Kid Flash, B03."

With the half of his brain not completely shocked, Wally figured that the computer must have been able to easier pick up on his lingering, probably disconnected, particles when they weren't mingled with other easier, discernible, connected particles. That particular fact would have been far more useful earlier.

Bruce took Barry's stare in stride and addressed Red Tornado, who was in private conversation with Dinah on the other side of the room, by saying, "The computer's glitching."

Barry held out his palm as Red Tornado started to move. "No, stay. That's what we need to talk about."


	15. Chapter 15

Wally had thought that there would have been more ceremony in storming Miss. Frances' house. There really wasn't. Not when he was in the company of two grief-stricken vigilantes. Bruce even allowed Barry to follow him into Gotham in costume, though seeing the two of them decked out in full uniform made Wally feel a bit left out.

Dick had been kind enough not to point out Wally's appearance, though Wally knew that had been mostly due to the fact that Dick was trained to not ask any unnecessary questions. Bruce hated it when he did that, Wally knew, and the two of them were supposed to be the most efficient partnership out of the entire League. Dick had probably known that Wally would have been unable to give him an answer. Fact of the matter was, there were no cuts or bruises on Wally's face, not a spec of dirt in his hair, nor a hair astray, despite having died in an explosion. But weirder still was the soft, pure white cotton sweatpants and soft, pure white cotton shirt of the same material that he was dressed in, which he never recalled owning, and which fit him perfectly. He had the itching suspicion that he was dressed in the clothing that he was buried in, which on one hand he was thankful to Barry for not forcing him to wear a suit for all of eternity, while on the other hand he felt awkward because he was traipsing around the Gotham night in pyjamas.

Wally had also thought that Bruce, at least as Batman, was a little bit more about stealth. Apparently, that didn't apply for when his baby bird literally fell out of the nest, because the man wasted no time in kicking down Miss. Frances' door. In fact, _Barry_ had been the one to go, "Hey, maybe we should scout out the-" right before Bruce's batboot collided with the cheap wood.

There was no immediate sound of a woman shrieking, so it was probably okay. Really, Wally couldn't wait until Batman picked her up by the collar of her shirt and demanded that she get Dick out of the insane asylum, because she had given Wally the creeps ever since the first time that he had joined Dick in that shrink's room.

Bruce thundered into the hall, and then into the kitchen, though he knocked nothing over and his footsteps were actually surprisingly light so maybe thundering wasn't the right word. Barry was faster, but more cautious. He zipped into the living room, looking with suspicion at the overturned couch cushions. Wally stood right between the two of them, glancing back and forth for whichever one of them found something first. There was no point in searching himself when he couldn't report his findings to the living superheroes.

Wally didn't have to wait long. Only a minute after everyone had gotten into their positions, Bruce and Barry spoke up at the same time.

"Blood," Bruce growled like a vampiric Clint Eastwood.

"Found a nose," Barry chirped bemusedly like a bad joke at a kid's birthday party.

Wally didn't know who to pay attention to more. On one hand, finding blood in someone's kitchen was definitely a cause for concern. On the other, it wasn't often that people lost their noses in their living rooms. It seemed that Bruce agreed with the latter, because with a flow of his cape that was remarkably alike Superman, he emerged beside Barry. Wally was soon to follow, and quick to give an unnecessary remark. "That's not a real nose," he said, though Bruce didn't mirror his words because unlike Wally, Bruce was not so much a fan of stating the obvious.

Instead, Bruce asked, "Why is that a significant find?" as he opened his belt and took out two glass slides and a syringe, sounding just like Wally's freshman Biology teacher whom he had no lost love for. Barry squeezed the 'nose', a large red foam ball, between his thumb and pointer finger, blinking as it gave off an obnoxious honk. He rolled the ball so that the hole at the bottom slipped over his thumb, and jiggled it with his thumb for good measure.

Bruce was already back in the kitchen, kneeling beside the oven where Wally could see a smear of red on its handle. He was applying the presumed blood to one of the glass slides with his syringe and adding the other slide on top so that the liquid was sandwiched. He slipped it back into his belt.

"It's a clown nose," Barry elaborated helpfully.

"Get to the point, Flash," replied Bruce.

"Batman, we are in the home of a supposedly neat and orderly psychiatrist. Except the place is completely trashed, there's blood in the kitchen and a clown nose in the annihilated living room. She has no kids, and I don't think there's been a circus in town for a good while. Isn't it a bit suspicious?" Barry said, not taking his eyes off of the nose that he was bobbing around on his finger. Bruce paused for a moment, his stance large and imposing in the kitchen doorway.

"If you're trying to say that the Joker was here, the Joker doesn't wear a clown nose," he responded.

"But doesn't he have a bunch of weird tricks up his sleeve - literally?" Barry insisted. He tore his eyes away from the foam ball in order to take a good look at the overturned couch and started to push it over. Wally, with a frown on his face, stopped watching him and instead started strolling through the kitchen, as if it would tell him something that the World's Greatest Detective had been unable to translate. There was the large thunk of the couch legs hitting the floor right side up, and then Barry's appreciative 'aha!'. "And what do you have it?" asked Barry rhetorically. "A Joker card. I may be an out-of-towner, but-"

He was cut off as Bruce suddenly surged forward and yanked the Joker card from his hands. After a brief examination, he added the card to one of his bottomless pouches. Bruce was heading out the window before Barry could protest. "Wait, where to?" he called as Bruce's grappling hook shot out.

"Batcave. I need to test if the blood belongs to Miss. Frances," he replied.

"And if it does?"

"Then we find the Joker and get her back," and then the Bat was gone.

Barry snorted. "And I'm the one for heroic one-liners?" he mumbled, before streaking out the door and onto the streets.

Wally sighed as he was left alone. It would be at least a few minutes before one of the two superheroes got to the cave, and Wally was unwilling to be by his lonesome in the lair of the Dark Knight. Still, the longer the seconds stretched by where Wally entertained himself by walking down Miss. Frances' hall, the more goosebumps Wally imagined he could feel. He quickly decided that potential kidnapping crime scenes were more creepy than caves with life sized T-rex models and disappeared.

He really was a laughable excuse for a ghost.

When he arrived, Wally didn't immediately go to the cave. Instead, he popped up inside of the manor, where he followed Alfred around and amused himself by mirroring the elderly man's actions like Peter Pan's shadow until a little device in Alfred's suit pocket declared that Barry had entered through the front entrance of the cave. Wally appeared there as Alfred headed down the stairs.

"Master Barry," Alfred greeted politely with a glass of water and multiple energy bars on a tray. Wally suspected that he kept a backup supply of energy bars in the pockets of his apron for occasions when Barry popped in. Barry took the refreshments gratefully.

"Hey, Alfred," Barry said, a frown etched into his eyebrows.

Alfred set the tray down on a clean marble table beside the Batcomputer before regarding Barry with a careful look. "May I ask what's troubling you?"

Barry didn't answer immediately. He was looking towards the waterfall that was the cave's main entrance and exit, expectant of Bruce at any second. Alfred waited patiently while Barry took a deep breath. "Do you believe in ghosts?" Barry blurted.

Alfred was unphased. "I can't say I do, or else I'd have a hard time being a butler for such a large manor," he replied smoothly.

"Me neither," Barry agreed, downing the water in a gulp. Alfred wordlessly took the glass from his hand. "But I do believe in Wally."

Hearing the words from Barry's mouth, Wally felt ridiculous for ever having doubted it.

"Then that's that. There shouldn't be anything for you to trouble yourself over," answered Alfred, and Wally found that he liked the butler for more than just his cookies.

Barry eyed him critically. "Do you even know what's going on?"

Alfred offered him a wry smile. "Not particularly, but news will reach me eventually. Right now is the mission. I'll wait until later for the briefing."

Barry nodded his head wisely, before breaking the mood with the crack of a grin. "You really are Batman's butler."

"Was there ever any doubt?"

It wasn't long until the Batmobile had sped smoothly to a stop in front of the cave's main room. Wally hadn't even heard it approaching. "Since when did the Batmobile convert to electric power?" Barry asked as Bruce jumped from the driver's seat. He offered no answer, though it was obvious that Barry wasn't expecting one. With the click of a remote lying beside the large desktop dominating the room, a metal wall slid down, revealing an area that was no doubt a laboratory. Bruce disappeared inside so quickly that Barry had to use his superspeed in order to catch up.

Meanwhile, Wally continued his entertaining activity as Alfred's shadow. He had decided that he would take up a silent career as the elderly butler's sidekick by the time that the wall slid open again and Barry burst out. The Flash didn't just stop there, though. There was no pause from the metahuman as he rushed from the cave.

"You've been here five whole minutes," Alfred told Bruce as the man jumped back into the Batmobile. Bruce didn't answer that, either.

"There was salt on a Joker's card with trace elements of sulphate, magnesium, calcium, potassium, bicarbonate, and smaller quantities of others that were indistinguishable. Table salt has been processed to remove trace elements such as those, and instead include additives," Bruce offered in way of explanation.

"Sea salt? Is that significant?" Alfred asked.

"Very."

"Wait, where are you going?" Wally exclaimed frantically as the engine of the car started up. He ran in front of the vehicle as if that would stop it, and was slightly offended when Bruce ran him over in order to follow Barry through the waterfall. "I don't have a driver's license! Or a car! Or a body!" he shouted after the man.

That was when things got weird. Truthfully, things had gotten weird long before then and that was just things being normal, but Wally's standards for normal hadn't yet included being a ghost, so he was still a bit slow in adjusting. When Bruce had completely disappeared from sight, Alfred stepped forward from where he had stood watching in order to pick up the glass slides that had fallen from Bruce's fingers. Only one slide remained intact, the other was shattered, so Wally figured that Alfred was probably going to find a broom. The elderly man stood.

In the exact same spot as Wally.

Wally found nothing about his vision to be changed, so for a millisecond, he didn't realise that anything had happened. But suits were uncomfortable, and caves were cold, and Alfred was in a cold cave wearing a suit, so the sudden rush of being filled with those particular sensations had Wally looking to his hands in panic.

The skin on his hands was shiny, glinting with the light of the cave, stretched over his knuckles and bunched in his palms. Just like Alfred's. Jolted with the illusion of adrenaline, Wally sprang backwards, falling to the cave ground that scraped against his white pyjamas without dirtying them. Staring ahead, he could see the stiff back of the tall butler, who spun around as if to stare back at Wally, only his eyes darted around without spotting him. There was a pause of silence permeated with the silent confusion of a butler that should have been retired and the frightened pants of a ghost.

"Ghosts, he said?" Alfred breathed to himself with a little nod. "I wouldn't be entirely shocked."

Wally didn't get up. He lay there, staring off towards the waterfall until Alfred got back with his broom and leisurely began sweeping. But Wally had an idea injected into his head and if he didn't go through with it right then, he would be stuck there until he did, because he didn't have the slightest clue as for where else to go.

He cautiously mirrored Alfred's position, just as he had done earlier, but that time, he took a step forward and melded with the man. And it was shocking, indeed. As himself, Wally couldn't feel the temperature, nor the slight breeze that was always present in the cave, nor the rustle of the fabric of his clothes. To be suddenly bombarded by all of that was almost overwhelming, but Wally had made sure to mentally prepare himself and was fast to act, patting down his new pockets for something akin to a cell phone. He had to make it quick because he had no idea how long he would be able to stay in the state that he was, there had to be a reason that there wasn't some sort of manual, so the second that his (Alfred's?) fingers closed around the cool sleek surface of something rectangular, he yanked it out. It was an iPhone, no doubt the newest, though Wally didn't know if any newer model had just been created, and it was locked.

In a moment's decision, he jumped back as he had done before in order to get out of Alfred's body, and he did fall to the floor just as the last time, except when he fell he was still in Alfred's suit. He didn't know how much Alfred's body would appreciate the harsh treatment and resolved to not try that again. Instead, he ran to the Batcomputer, half crawling as he stumbled in his haste, and grabbed the first sticky note and pen that he could find.

Wally stared at the message he had written for an amazed moment, relishing for a second how the side of the pen dug into his finger due to the way that he held it. But then he squeezed his eyes shut and mentally chanted to be let out, all of his muscles tensed, all of his willpower exerted, and before he knew it, he was literally shoved away by some unseen force. When Wally, stumbling but still standing, examined Alfred, he saw that Alfred's body was tense with his eyes squeezed tightly, too, and he had the strangest notion that perhaps Alfred had been the one to force him out.

Breath held in anticipation, Wally watched as Alfred gave a bewildered analysation of the note in his hands.

"'Ask Batman where he went,'" Alfred read, voice remarkably blunt. Without looking around and with only the slightest hint of hesitation, Alfred grabbed his phone from the desk, where Wally had put it down, smoothly unlocked it, and put it up to his ear. "Master Batman, would you mind if you let me know where you're off to this time?" The entire conversation couldn't have lasted a minute. Slipping the phone back into his pocket, Alfred stared down at the note again. "The Flash is at the police department speaking with Commissioner Gordon. Batman is at the docks."

Wally didn't know what Alfred did after that, because in the next second, he was at the docks.

Nothing in the sky was visible, not even the clouds. For a city so shrouded in darkness, it was surprisingly bright, and the light pollution blinded Wally's eyes to anything above or even below, because he was standing at the very end of a shipping dock right in front of a large nameless ship, and the water reminded him of sluggish oil.

There was movement on the ship beside Wally, and that was odd because Wally didn't think anyone wanted to be alone in a dark ship so late at night. It was a little less odd when the lights on the lower deck flickered on. There were ropes and planks of wood scattered all about Wally's feet, too. Wally didn't know what the hours for ship constructors in Gotham were, but by the wood and nails and cranes with steel and sloppy white paint blotting out the ship's name, at least the people on board probably weren't shady criminals.

Well, then again, it was Gotham. He was both in awe and a bit concerned that situations like where Wally was standing right then were normally the situations that his best friend usually worked. It was unnerving and creepy, the silence of the place and the mystery of it all. Wally had always preferred to fight crime during the day, particularly in the sunny atmosphere of Central City.

Wally began to make his way off the dock and onto solid ground, where walls and towers of boxes and crates were making a new city of their own. His (clean, new, probably really expensive, why didn't he have shoes like them when he was alive?) sneakers made no sound or touch against the wood of the dock because, like with all unnatural ground that Wally would go right through, he hovered just a centimeter or so above it. It was disappointing that he couldn't hover more, because being able to fly would have been pretty cool.

In front of the boxes (or, more accurately, in the middle of the boxes and crates) was a warehouse. Not an abandoned one, thankfully (Wally was pretty much done with cliches), or at least it didn't look very abandoned. In fact, the lights inside were on, and there were voices coming from within, though Wally couldn't hear quite what they said. Before he could explore further, however, Barry finally appeared, skidding on the gravel and almost crashing into one of the precariously teetering crates.

"Wow, that wouldn't have been good," the man in yellow breathed in relief. Wally snorted, because Barry's tendency to talk to himself would probably never go away. Barry touched his right earpiece. "The Commissioner said that he can't spare any men, there's some sort of drug bust happening across the district," he paused then and frowned. "If you knew that, why'd you make me ask?" then, "Pretty useless keeping somebody informed if they can't do anything. Where are you, anyway? Your echolocating butt isn't any help when it isn't here. I can't agree that finding a bit of dried sea salt on a Joker card automatically means a clown is at some shady dock, but this does looks promising."

A minute passed before Batman jumped down soundlessly behind Barry from the roof of a neighbouring warehouse, and when Barry jumped as if a fire had been lit beneath his feet, Wally was nostalgically reminded of Dick and himself. "What the hell happened to your gigantic car?" Barry hissed when he had recovered.

"I can't park the Batmobile in the parking lot," replied Bruce in his Batman growl.

"I don't see why not. It's what they're there for."

Bruce didn't grace Barry with an answer. Instead, he motioned for silence and began scanning the area with a patience that neither Barry nor Wally had. He also took much longer with the scouting and examining of the immediate area than Barry or Wally ever had, and Barry had opened his mouth, probably to tell Bruce to get on with it, when Bruce began making hand signals. Barry blinked in bemusement. "Sorry, I don't speak bat," he said bluntly.

Bruce didn't make any visible facial expression. "Joker's MO points to the warehouse. It's likeliest that he's there, especially with all of the voices. He likes to put on a show. That's for me. You head for the ship, run every person there out and put them on Front Street."

"And then I'm helping you," Barry added. At Bruce's silent disapproval, he continued. "I didn't come all this way and do all this waiting around to piggyback a bunch of possible delinquent teenagers who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. I came all this way and did all this waiting around to help you out and get Dick back."

"There won't be enough time," Bruce insisted.

"Then you get the civilians and I take the Joker. He won't be expecting a guy with super speed, he'll be expecting you," refuted Barry.

"You don't know the Joker like I do," said Bruce with a tone of finality, and then he was off like a shadow.

Barry huffed irritably. "Seriously, with the one-liners. He could be in a movie. He's already famous."

Wally didn't stick around to hear more. Instead, he promptly attempted following Bruce. As much as he loved his uncle, he yearned for where the action was. He had to scout around on foot, considering he didn't know where he was supposed to teleport to, but finding Bruce was easy enough when Wally didn't have to hide himself at the same time.

It also meant that he could just walk into the middle of the warehouse and see what was going on before Bruce had the chance. Bruce was outside of the warehouse, right below a window. Last Wally checked, he had dug into his utility belt and produced a fancy looking pen, which ended up being a fancy looking laser as it silently burned away the seams of the window, though Wally was at a loss as to why Bruce couldn't just open it. Bruce had used the suctions on his gloves to prevent the window from falling and shattering when Wally took it upon himself to walk through the wall.

He frowned.

There were boxes and there were crates, as was expected, and there were men scattered about, as was expected. One of the men was asleep in a plastic chair in the corner, as was expected, two men were at the two main doors, as was expected, and there was a group of men in the middle talking, as was expected. But they were all men. That wasn't as expected. There wasn't a single woman, let alone the specific kidnapped woman the superheroed company of three were there for. There was no clown. And, in the middle of the room, the talking group of men were split into two sides, arguing.

"Yeah? And where's the big man?" one guy from the left side was saying.

"You want the boss guy, have yours get his coward ass in the open, first," said another one furthest on the right.

Someone else beside him, still on the right side, irritably declared, "take it or leave it."

"How d'we know yer not kiddin' us?" a left man said. "A ship, eh? Sounds like a set up."

"Don't joke. We wouldn't sink a perfectly good ship for your asses. Honour on our word and all that, right?"

"More like honour on your dough. Bunch of motherfuckers you are."

"That's no way to treat your host."

"Host? What the fuck, you own the fucking city now?"

"No, they just own the whole damn docks, ain't that right?"

"Do we have a deal or not? I'm not going to waste my time."

Wally spun around, intending to go back to Bruce and give him some sort of heads up, anything, because he didn't think they were in the right place, but the glass was already out of the window and Bruce was nowhere to be seen.

That was, until the man dropped onto one of the guys on the right side, the one who had been talking the most and who Wally was going to nickname Mr. Superior just because of his posh attitude. Bruce instantly had a knife to his throat in the middle of room, surrounded by all of the other men. Before anyone could give anything but a shout of alarm, Bruce had tightened his grip and waved the position for everyone to see. "Where's the Joker?" he growled to no one in particular.

"Who the fuck-" Mr. Superior began as he struggled, until Bruce kicked his feet out from under him and the knife scraped his throat.

"I don't like to repeat myself," Bruce said monotonously.

Mr. Superior panted as he tried to breathe without cutting his skin. "J-Joker?" he gasped. "Haven't seen no Joker. Have nothin' to do with that clown! We're just finishing up s-some last minute work at the shipping docks. Got our load outside, ready f-for the morning. E-extra hours' pay and all that, swear."

Bruce took one obvious look around the room, at all the guns pointed straight at him, and tightened his grip. "I don't like liars, either."

One guy on the left abruptly dropped his gun. "Fuck that, he's not my guy," he said in the ringing silence as he made a run for the door on the left side of the room. The two guards at that door followed suit. Nobody stopped them. The man in the chair was still sleeping, with him counting seven men remaining, only two on the left side and only four on the right side that were awake, including the man being held hostage by the billionaire in the bat costume.

One guy on the right, directly behind Bruce, moved to press his gun against the back of his mask. "Let him go or I'll blow your fuckin' brains out," he said, his words punctuated by the nudge of the gun's muzzle.

Bruce easily moved his head to the side, switching his position with Mr. Superior so that the crook of his elbow was choking him instead of the knife, and kicked back. The man who had threatened him was hit square in the gut and crumbled, his gun firing a single shot over Bruce's shoulder. Then the rest of the guns started going off.

Bruce turned so to shield Mr. Superior, his back getting the brunt of the ammo, and Wally took that moment to remark with relief that Bruce wasn't some sort of superhuman ninja who could dodge every bullet ever fired at him, he just had a lot of high tech bullet proof gear. It wasn't surprising at all.

"Get Flash!" Bruce shouted, and while the men paid no mind to what Bruce had to say as the superhero tried balancing both his hostage and taking down the others without getting said hostage shot, Wally puzzled over Bruce's strange request.

Until Wally realised that Bruce was talking to him.

"What?" he shouted back, as if Bruce could hear him. "How do you expect me to do that?"

Clearly, Bruce didn't care how Wally expected to do that, and Wally took that moment to reflect on a few facts:

First of all, Barry had superspeed, so he should have joined Bruce by then. There wasn't exactly a party going on in that ship.

Second of all, Joker was at the docks. But out of the two places occupied at the docks, he wasn't in the warehouse. Which meant that he was probably on the ship.

And third of all, Barry was on that ship.

Wally started running before he really thought about much else, proven by the fact that he didn't even remember that he could teleport until he was already outside. He took advantage of that ability, and seconds later he reappeared in front of the infamous Joker, who was terrifying and cruel and getting his hair brushed.

"So, let me get this straight," Barry said from behind Wally, who glanced quickly to note that the speedster was stuck inside of a cage made of red lasers. "You have a harem now?"

Wally had been expecting many scenarios. Finding his uncle relatively unharmed while the Joker (who was chubbier around the middle than he had imagined, huh) sat in a worn desk chair with his feet propped on a barrel of toxic waste, getting his hair brushed by a curvy grinning lady in a clown costume complete with bells and all, was not one of them. The Joker's grin didn't drop an inch, though the presumably psychopathic lady beside him didn't seem so uneffected. The corners of her mouth drooped and her eyebrows furrowed. "Just me, right Mister J?" Her voice was high pitched, heavily accented, and unnerving. It struck a chord with Wally, and not a pleasant one.

The Joker only cackled and smoothly got to his feet, wagging his finger and shaking his head in a way that kind of reminded Wally of a dog. A rabid dog. The lady opened her fingers lazily and the brush dropped to the floor with a clatter. "No, no, no, this is Harley," he said, like that was supposed to be at all significant. Harley smiled dopily. "Harley and I were just havin' a bit a fun, you see. These boxes are important. Important up here, I mean. But down there, not so much! Down in the ocean, well, they're quite useless. Can't light a wet string and all that," Joker proclaimed loudly and, as if on cue, Harley scurried behind him to pick up a crate, display it proudly, and slip it casually through the circular window that was on the side of the ship.

"All those funny men arguin' and arguin' while there ain't nothin' to argue 'bout! Then they'll go runnin' and runnin' in circles, won't they, Mister J?" Harley said dreamily.

"Right-o. And then they'll blame each other and do all sortsa nasty things. Why, I wonder how come Batsy always chases after me when I don't think I've killed nobody, yet these funny men Harley talks about always shoot each other to smithereens! Maybe I'll ask."

Barry just looked overwhelmed. "You guys look so funny that I can't even take you seriously," he deadpanned.

"Ah-ah-ah, you're not from around here, are ya?" Joker declared, getting up close and personal with the cage. He didn't look the least bit offended. Wally wished that he was solid enough to push the Joker's face into the lasers. "That's no fun. You're too easy! Call Batsy." When Barry only lifted his eyebrows, the Joker flicked his wrist. "Go on. Call him."

Barry slowly tapped his earpiece. "Uh, Batman? Yeah, Joker wants you." There was a moment of silence until Barry lifted his head again and addressed the Joker. "He says he's kind of busy."

Joker sighed loudly and slumped back into his desk chair, waving Harley over. With a bounce, she picked up her brush and resumed brushing his hair. "Tell him I'll wait."

"He says he'll wait," Barry echoed through the earpiece.

Wally didn't really know what to do but wait with them. The silence was more than a bit awkward, though maybe that was just for him and Barry, because the Joker and Harley seemed to be enjoying themselves plenty as the Joker's hair was cared for and Harley giggled at nothing in particular.

Then, with unnecessary theatrics, the wooden latch at the top of the stairs for the ship's bottom level was kicked through, and Batman emerged in all of his glory, his cape and bat ears looking like swiss cheese. "Batsy!" Joker cried with delight and a clap. Harley squeaked as the Joker stood so abruptly that her brush was knocked from her hands. "How nice of you to join us."

The psychopath was unfazed as he was suddenly manhandled by the collar of his shirt. "Hehehe, Batsy, no need to be so rough!"

"Where is she?"

"I'd tell you, if I knew who you were talking about," the Joker grinned.

"You know who."

"Ah, but what if I don't know who, and I tell you the location of the wrong who?"

"Jesus Christ," Barry swore. "Miss. Frances, the psychiatrist! Where is she?"

There was a beat of total silence, which threw Wally off guard. He was a bit jealous of his uncle. He wanted to yell at the Joker, too.

Then, the Joker suddenly started cackling. It was a moderate amount at first, but then it just kept increasing in volume and intensity until Bruce simply dropped the crazy man because the man was laughing so hard that he sounded as if he might have started choking on his saliva. Joker crumbled to the floor. "Oh, how awkward!" he exclaimed with glee.

"What?" Bruce demanded. He kicked the Joker so that the man was cackling on his stomach, and pressed a heavy boot on his back. He leaned his weight into that foot, causing the Joker to let off a groan and give a gasp for air.

"What a coincidence!"

" _What?"_

Harley peered from over the desk chair, looking a little conflicted about the boot on the Joker's back. She cocked her head as she directed her wide eyes at Bruce, and then smiled. "Hiya, I'm Harley!"

Bruce gave her no attention. She pouted.

"Hi, Harley," the Joker panted as the pressure on his back was increased. Harley beamed again.

"Hiya, Mister J!"

"Batsy, give the nice lady some courtesy," he gasped.

Slowly, Bruce turned his head to face Harley. She bounced right up to him. "You must be Batman. Nice to meetcha!"

"Do you know where she is?"

"Where's who?" Harley quipped innocently.

"Miss. Frances," Bruce growled.

"Duh!" Harley beamed. Bruce froze, before promptly stepping off of the Joker and giving Harley his full attention. "After all, the name's Harley Quinn!"

"Where is she?"

Joker tisked, shaking his head as he tried to recover his breath while slumped on the floor. "Always back to business. Bo-oring," he drawled.

"Nono," Harley said with the sweeping of her head, her smile a little drooped in frustration. "You don't understand. I'm Harleen Quinzel!" When no one gave any indication of comprehension, she huffed and crossed her arms. "Harleen _Frances_ Quinzel."

The only thing Wally could really think at that moment was:

No wonder Dick went insane.

* * *

 **I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT SINCE I STARTED THIS FIC.**

 **You know, I've been really surprised that there hasn't been more Miss. Frances hate. You guys are all hating on Bruce. I mean, you do realise that the person who put Dick in that asylum is Miss. Frances, right? AND GUESS WHAT: SHE'S NOT ACTUALLY AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER.**

 **HA.**

 **Also, yes, Wally just went into the body of an 80-something year old man. Freaky.**

 **Hope you all enjoyed. c:**


	16. Chapter 16

**I have nothing to say. I'm just excited for people's reactions to this chapter.**

 **This is a very short one, unfortunately, but I couldn't choose how to split my chapters. I didn't want to add this one to the last chapter or the next one because _it was just such a great cut-off point._**

 **Now, without further ado, please enjoy. c:**

* * *

Surgery? Surgery. But Dick wasn't hurt.

At least, not physically. His brain hurt plenty. Did that count as physical?

They were going to fix his brain.

They had said it. Dick didn't know when they had said it, but they had said it. Or did they? Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe they weren't real. Maybe none of it was real.

The light was real enough. They kept shining it into his eyes. It hurt. His vision was scrambled afterwards, blurry and swimming and there were little dots, constantly, every time he got up. It felt like his brain was being squeezed, squeezed, and he was thirsty, so thirsty, but the water tasted strange.

Swim, swim, hurt, hurt. He might as well not try to get up.

They were going to fix his brain.

They had said it. With the shining light and that frown etched deep into the corners of their mouths, and that woman especially, with a little dot pressing into her cheek, making a funny bump, but Dick had forgotten the word for it. And there was a syringe, and then it was black, and when he awoke, there was so much more swimming and so much more thirst and with each new thirst, the water tasted even stranger.

They were going to fix his brain.

They had said it. He had scrambled away. Dick didn't want his brain fixed. The pressure was painful, it hurt, and the thirst was hard, and he felt hot, hot, all the time, until he felt cold, cold, but that was only when he wasn't hot. But at least he could feel his brain, and that was real. The pain was real. If something could give him pain, then that meant it was real, right? And sometimes, he had to pinch himself real hard because he had to make sure his arms were real, too.

He could no longer pinch himself when they wrapped his arms all up in his shirt, so he had to hit the wall with his head instead, until the pain was no longer squeezing but it was also throbbing and he tasted iron in his mouth and felt the red in his eyes. The red was stinging, and sometimes they took the strange water they gave and threw it into his face to wash out the red, watching it stream to stain his shirt which was then pink around the neck, but Dick didn't want that strange water in his eyes. The red was his own, and he could trust it, but he couldn't trust the water. The water was poisoning his eyes. That was why he saw things. The water was poisoning his eyes and making him see things that nobody else saw.

The water was giving him strange abilities, too. Sometimes, the things he saw told him to get away from them, they would hurt him, they were hurting him, everything was hurting him, and then those things told him to get away and save Barbara, they were hurting her too, so Dick had the ability to know these things and see these things but Barbara didn't. Barbara wasn't safe.

Barbara had put him in that place. She had thought that Dick wasn't safe. But Dick knew better.

They were going to fix his brain.

Soon, they had said. And they stopped pouring water into his eyes. They left him for longer periods of time and Dick couldn't keep track anymore of how many pills had been shoved down his throat and choked and gurgled.

They were going to fix his brain.

And maybe then, Dick would stop getting his eyes poisoned, and he would be able to keep Barbara safe.

They were going to fix his brain. Soon.

* * *

Things really started rolling after the reveal of Miss. Frances' apparent insanity.

The room was bathed in silence, filled only with the Joker's hysteric cackling that Wally didn't think he'd ever be able to extract from his memory. "This night just keeps getting funnier," Joker said with a yellow toothed grin. Bruce lunged forward for Harley, but she leaped out of the way at the same time that Joker sprung from the floor with a remote in his hand.

Wally was really tired of explosions. A quick scan of the room showed no bombs, however, and Barry seemed a bit skeptical, too, standing with his hands on his hips and a furrow in his brow.

"Nuh-uh-uh," Joker advised with a pouty shake of his head. Harley waved her finger. "Not so fast, Batsy. See this remote here?" he brandished it grandly. "Oh relax, you personally don't need to worry about it at all! It won't blow anything up. Pinky promise." He looked a little disappointed at that, but went on: "No, you won't have to, but little ketchup and mustard over there might."

Barry's eyebrows rose. "How are you going to hurt me from in here without a bomb or a gun?"

The Joker winked. "Like this," he declared, and pressed the button.

Nothing happened. At first. Then Barry gave a startled yelp and a little stumble, and when both Wally and Bruce examined him, they saw that there was a square plank on the floor beneath him separated like a secret door from the rest of the ship, covering the borders of the cage. Except it was apparently no secret door, because one side of it was rising above the rest of the planks while the other side began dipping below. It was tilting, and Barry had nothing to hold onto to maintain his balance while it did.

"Now, you've got a choice: Either get me and Harley, or save your saucy little friend." The Joker laughed when Bruce sprung forward and grabbed him by the upper arm. "Oh, no, you can't cheat," the crazy man chided as he ripped open his jacket and stuck out his tongue. Timers, sticks of dynamite, and everything classic for a grand explosion were haphazardly taped there and onto his stomach. Honestly, the whole stock looked a bit 90's, but it would have still been able to do a fair amount of damage.

Also, the Joker didn't look so chubby anymore, Wally noted. He looked more like how Dick had described.

"To get me, you have to stop the timer, Batsy!" Joker scolded. "And by taking the time to stop this jacket from blowing me up, up, and away, you run out of time to save the cheetah lad."

The thing was, Barry wasn't going to get blown up. He wasn't going to get poisoned, or stabbed, or gunned down. But he was going to lose his balance and fall, and when he did, he would fall right through the bars of the laser-formed cage as the entire cage tilted onto its side.

Hyper-healing didn't work when all of his body parts were disconnected.

Bruce looked like he was actually considering, and that split second of thought flitting across his face made Wally angrier than anything that had happened so far. But while the man was mission-oriented, he wasn't stupid, so he turned to Barry as the Joker cackled.

Barry was stumbling. Bruce quickly reached into his belt and pulled out a rope, carefully tossing it through the bars of the cage after tying it to a chandelier hook on the ceiling, and Barry wasted no time in grabbing hold. Bruce began frantically searching around for something to stop the tilting, but he found nothing, and as Wally watched, the man paused to stare at the floor before making a quick decision. He sprang towards the far corner, where a hammer sat innocuously. Harley gave out a sound of protest but was ignored when Bruce lifted it up and began hacking away at the floorboards surrounding the tilting wood.

And Wally did nothing.

It wasn't that he _could_ do anything, per say, but he still felt like he should have tried. Instead, he walked into the cage and hovered behind Barry, as if he could catch him in case he fell, resenting the fact that something so life threatening for his uncle was so effortless in solving for himself.

Knowing that it was still useless to stand there, in no way would Wally be able to catch him, Wally eventually walked around so that he stood in front of Barry. Barry wasn't looking at him (read: through him). The speedster was panicked, and panting hard, and Wally could still see, watching his eyes, the way Barry mentally chanted words of encouragement. Barry used to do that out loud with Wally when his eyes got panicked and twitchy and pained, but Bruce was something else. Bruce didn't appreciate optimistic chanting. So Barry squeezed his eyes shut and started mouthing something that Wally couldn't read, clutching the rope so hard that he was no doubt getting burned.

And the Joker was still cackling.

Wally hated clowns.

He didn't watch, but he did hear the round window on the side of the ship get flung open, and figured that Bruce had broken the flimsy stairs while thundering down them earlier. It was just background noise, like wind or the swish of grass, to the sound of the wooden floor giving way beneath Bruce's (well, apparently Miss. Frances) hammer, and the sound of Barry's yelps as his body was almost tilted horizontally with his sole savior being the rope. Then, the hammer dropped, and Bruce was tearing up the boards like a madman, and then he was beneath the boards and Wally could hear the clank of machinery and hear him bump the wood in his struggle to turn something off, but Wally was still staring at Barry.

Barry looked terrified, and the man was so focused on looking behind him, at his potential oncoming doom, that he didn't bother to check the rope. Wally did.

"The rope!" he shouted, but he could get no other words out. He reached out desperately to grab hold of the rope, but his hands went through. Because, as Barry tilted, he dragged the rope with him, slowly, until the loop of rope hanging onto the hook in the ceiling was balanced on the very end of the hook. Wally's chest squeezed, his throat felt like it was buzzing silently, and he couldn't swallow because it hurt. He wanted to cry, but he was too scared, and he wanted to scream, but no one would have heard him, and he wanted to help, but he couldn't even help himself.

Then, as if Barry could somehow have heard him, the man glanced up.

The rope slipped off.

And he fell.


	17. Chapter 17

Whoever had said that life altering events happened in slow motion was an idiot. Life altering events went too fast. Wally didn't even know what had happened until long after it had finished.

Bruce registered it at around the same time as him, and at the scream and thud and silence, Bruce sprang quicker than a jack rabbit out from beneath the floorboards to stare at the remains of Barry.

"Please, God, please never take me to a circus," Barry was sobbing in relief, his face in his hands.

Wally could relate. He felt tears on his cheeks before he knew it, though when he went to wipe them away, there wasn't actually anything there. Being a ghost was still weird. Wally wished that Bruce would hug Barry for him, but that wasn't exactly the man's MO and it didn't appear to change after watching his teammate get nearly chopped up. Instead, Bruce walked over to Barry, seemed to take a deep breath, and offered out his hand.

Barry waved his wrist at him, refusing to lift his head. "I'll be fine," he hiccuped. "Go avenge me or something."

Apparently, Bruce didn't need to get very far in order to mostly complete that deed, because there was a thunk and yelp from the window, and Wally turned to see a hammer fall from it. "No!" was the high-pitched whine from outside of the window. "I want that back!"

* * *

"Good work," the man who Wally assumed to be Commissioner Gordon said gruffly and honestly, albeit somewhat awkwardly, to the shadows of the alley. Wally knew that Bruce had already left, but he replied 'you, too' for the man anyway.

Miss. Frances was being dragged, pouting face and all, into a police car just across the street. Wally had thought it would be satisfying, maybe relaxing, to see such a sight, but he had a hard time associating the Joker's crazy girlfriend to Dick's psychiatrist and instead, it only caused him more stress. He wouldn't be stress-free until Dick was right in the head and had a good night's rest away from white jackets and straight jackets and pills and tablets. If anything, Wally was more anxious, because all that there was left to do was play the waiting game.

The next night, Bruce was invited over to the West-Allen household to celebrate, though nobody really knew if they were celebrating, grieving, or regretting. The man had to enter the house's upper floor through the window in costume because, according to his logic, it was apparently more suspicious for a billionaire to be in Barry's house as opposed to a masked vigilante that was in the wrong part of the country. Wally didn't trust Bruce's logic anymore, anyway.

If it had been up to Bruce, everyone knew that he wouldn't have shown up at all. So Barry ensured that Bruce appeared right on the dot, Bruce brought the poison (and bat costume), and Iris poured said poison (which was, in reality, just booze) with not much of an idea on where to stop. Wally didn't contribute in the slightest. In fact, the second that Bruce fell in silence beside Barry on the couch, he left.

He was anxious.

Wally appeared in Dick's cell just as they were beginning to drag him away.

They had a white stretcher that looked innocent enough, if it weren't for the leather buckles hanging off the sides and clinking against the metal frame. Dick was panicking for the split second that Wally saw him awake, but then something was stabbed into his thigh (femoral artery, Wally assumed) and seconds later he dropped like a doll. The white jackets, two men and a woman, didn't bother with removing his straight jacket. They unceremoniously hauled him onto the stretcher and strapped him down as if they were restraining Frankenstein rather than a 5'2" teenage boy.

"He's secure," said the man closest to the door.

"Then tell them to prepare for the operation," the woman snapped as they wheeled him away

Wally was almost as sick of emergencies as he was of explosions. And clowns. And death. He was pretty much sick of everything. He didn't stay in that cell for a minute by the time that he was back in his living room again, watching Barry down his first shot and mutter something about unorganised macromolecules in the case he had at work. Bruce was just swishing his around in its glass, staring at it with an absent fascination.

When Wally stampeded up the stairs (as much as a one-ghost army could stampede), heart pounding, he found that all of his belongings had been cleaned up from the floor, but when he dashed into his room, none of them were there. He had no time to wonder where Iris had put all of the things that he had moved, however, because folded neatly on his bed was Iris' ugly Christmas sweater. She had probably had no heart to put it in storage.

It was the only object under fifty pounds he had left to touch.

He threw it downstairs. The itchy wool pooled on the hardwood floor without a sound, and Wally scowled. He preferred it when he had statues that he could dramatically shatter. By the time he got to the first floor, though, and bent to pick up the sweater, he saw the eyes of Iris from the living room. She was staring at the sweater in horror.

Wally reckoned that objects being silently tossed around on their own were probably creepier in the long run.

"Iris?" Barry asked, confused, and Wally ran into the living room to see the two men staring at his aunt unfalteringly. On any other day, Wally could already hear her remarking how flattered she was to have such attention. Iris moved into the hall to gingerly pick up the sweater. Barry, Wally, and Bruce followed. "Let me guess: Wally?"

Bruce looked on impassively.

But Wally was too frantic and on too short a time leash to allow for Barry to start his usual banter. He yanked the sweater from Iris' hands, as Bruce looked like he'd just seen a ghost - hah - balled it up, and threw it at Bruce's crotch.

It probably wasn't the most appropriate way to get the message across, but it was all that he had. It also felt kind of good to be able to throw something at _the_ Batman without fearing for his life, considering he no longer had one.

Bruce slowly bent down to pick up the sweater and stared at it. Noting that Bruce didn't seem to get what Wally was trying to say, he tried to yank the article of clothing out of Bruce's hand, but soon found out that Bruce had a grip like steel.

"Let him have it," Barry said, and Bruce finally let go after a considering second.

Wally balled it up and threw it at Bruce's crotch again.

"If that's a ghost, then it's definitely Wally's," Bruce said with a mild frown. Wally picked the sweater back up, too adrenaline hit to care about Bruce's comfort, balled it up, and threw it at Barry's crotch that time.

Barry looked bewildered. "Did we make you mad?" he asked tentatively. "Why don't you throw this at Iris? She made it, and at least she doesn't have a-"

There was a tense, anticipating pause. Wally was jumping on the balls of his feet, his fingers twisted in his hair.

"-Dick," Barry finished, giving Bruce a sidelong glance.

"This is why I brought the costume," said Bruce simply.

* * *

They said nothing when they slammed open the door. Dick jumped and tried to hide, but there really wasn't anywhere to hide, so he stood and decided on confrontation instead.

After all, his head felt clearer than it had in a long time, even if he had no recollection of what had happened over the past however long it had been.

"Calm down," the man closest to him was saying. "We weren't able to medicate you because of your upcoming procedure, but don't worry, you'll be treated soon." Dick couldn't read the expression on his face. It was blank, but the voice felt soft. The woman between him and the man at the door scowled at it and presented herself boldly before Dick. She walked closer.

Dick went for a leg sweep. The woman stumbled and crashed into the stretcher they had wheeled in, shocked, but Dick couldn't do much else when the man who had been attempting to soothe him bear hugged him from the side aggressively, practically barrelling into him, and that coupled with his weak and nauseous state sent him crashing to the floor. He tried to reach for a pressure point on the man's neck, but remembered that his arms were securely bound to him, and there was no way for him to crawl away.

There was a prick of pain in his thigh, and then the world went black.

When he awoke, he was confused. There was so much light. Bright light, hard light, cold light, in his eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Cold light, hard light, bright light, glinting menacingly off of the sharp, sharp-

And he was talking, or trying to, voice like trying to move sluggishly through the mud in his throat, and a masked man was trying to talk, too, a bag covering most of his face, and Dick thought that was a peculiar disguise, but at least it worked better than Clark's.

Clark. Who was Clark again?

The masked man held up the sharp-something, but it was sharp, and the cold light was still glinting menacingly.

Dick couldn't see past it. It was too bright. He tried to talk again, and finally got to the end of the mud clogging his throat but then there was something muffling his words, he couldn't understand himself, couldn't hear himself, something was covering his mouth, and he tried to thrash, because without his voice he couldn't say no, they couldn't ask for his consent about anything they did and he did not give his consent, wasn't that illegal, what was going on- But he couldn't thrash, because his body felt like lead, and even if it didn't, he was also probably strapped down.

Dick thought that the masked man could have been smiling, but that might also have been fictional.

Voices, more voices, and they were all bustling about, and getting closer and further away from him and a click, there was a click, the click of a door, and there was the buzz of a machine and beep, beep, beep, beepbeepbeepbeep went his heart.

Closer, further away, closer, further away, closer, closer, closer-

The scrape of machinery, the scrape of metal, commands, demands, and the light was moving and being focused and suddenly all Dick could see was the light, he could no longer see the- knife, it was a knife, and he was frightened, afraid, and terrified, because he couldn't see what they were doing, he couldn't feel what they were doing, they could have been doing anything, they could have been inside of his head right at that moment and he-

Bebebebebebeep-

They could have been inside of his head. Maybe it was all inside of his head. Relax, and it would all go away.

Then suddenly, though he still couldn't see, it that wasn't because it was too bright. It was too dark.

Sounds, and thumps, and thunks, and cries, and the sound of leather and metal and clink, clink, and Dick was being lifted, though he couldn't feel the arms lifting him, and he was being draped over something, probably a shoulder because he was moving, and he felt a bit motion sick.

Everything was so overwhelming, and he was too numb, his head too filled with a background static to process it all.

When feeling was slowly returning to him, it was with the faint sensation of cold air being whipped through his hair and lashed across his cheeks. Dick realised then that his arms were still tied up, but he didn't have much time to feel discomfort when something was being opened high, high, high above the ground (look at that person over there, she was so tiny). He saw beige carpet when he was taken inside of a building.

"Batman? Oh dear god, please don't tell me that you've started kidnapping children. I had more faith in you than that."

Dick was let down into a chair, head swimming, feeling like he wanted to puke, but so bone-deep exhausted that he couldn't even be bothered to fix his posture into something more comfortable. His arms were being untied, and when he blurrily looked up, it was by another person in a dark mask. Batman.

Dick didn't react. The man probably wasn't real.

"Is that Dick Grayson? Batman, what in hell's name do you think you're doing?" exclaimed the panicked voice.

"Look at him, Commissioner." There was momentary silence. "I don't trust many things, but I trust that you can take better care of him than anyone else I know who's legally available."

"Is that a straightjacket? And his- jesus, I can count his ribs. As much as I want to, god do I want to, I can't. Quinzel's case hasn't gone to trial. I have no authority here."

"They were trying to cut his head open without any written consent. Considering he was put there in the first place by an arrested criminal, you can judge the environment potentially unsafe. You're a smart man, Jim. You can find a way."

"Cut his head open? Holy- okay, okay, just wait a second, alright? Don't go vanishing on me, I need to make a phone call."

Dick heard footsteps walking away (with the muttered, "This crap didn't happen to me in Chicago"), and then the muffled sound of someone speaking into the phone in another room. Batman was kneeling in front of him, and Dick didn't have much time to mentally backtrack and remember when that had happened when Batman (Bruce, Batman was Bruce, he was no stranger, but he sure seemed stranger than before-) gently took his hand. Dick stared with drooping eyes.

"We're going to get you out of this and you're going to get better, okay?" Bruce whispered.

Unable to open his mouth, Dick vaguely nodded.

"I'm so sorry," continued Bruce, and he sounded strangled. "Dick, I am so, so sorry. I hope you can forgive me someday. I never wanted to put you through any of this-"

Bruce cut himself off and slowly stood up as the other man, Commissioner Jim Gordon, walked back into the room, a phone pressed to his ear. "No, I'm not sorry that it's late. This lady is blatantly insane. Knowing she's associated with the Joker alone makes her insane, and now I have a kid who, I've been told, very nearly escaped _the verge of death_ dropped in a _handbasket_ on my goddamn doorstep! I'm taking him home with me and calling every doctor there myself - there is no way in _hell_ this boy is going back into a white walled facility tonight. Let me keep him until the trial and we'll call us even." Jim's voice echoed in the empty, mostly dark, police department. "Then kid proof my house in the morning. This boy is too sick to even look at me and he's not a five year old! You already know my record is clean. My home is a family home, just ask one of the Barbara's. I know you're tired, just let me have him for tonight and we can figure everything out tomorrow. Yes. Thank you. Goodnight." The phone was hung up and Jim sighed in exasperation. "You're lucky some people in important places owe me favours."

"Thank you," Bruce said sincerely, and Jim froze awkwardly before nodding. The masked man turned to Dick, and Dick had the sensation that he was being looked in the eyes, though it was hard to tell from the shadows. He stood there for a moment, ruffled Dick's hair gently, to which Jim pretended not to see and asked no questions (Dick knew there had to have been a reason as to why Bruce liked the man so much), and left, but Dick thought that the way Bruce seemed to have to yank himself away made it seem like one of the hardest things he had ever done.

But that was only inside of Dick's head. Relax, and it would all go away.

* * *

 **Okay, I find it super super ironic that the beginning of the happyish resolution is due on Christmas. I also realise it isn't Christmas today, but I'm spending all of Christmas working on cosplay, so here, have an early update.**

 **Happy Holidays, everyone! Thank you all for sticking through the anticlimactic mess that is Point Of View. That's truly the best gift!**

 **EDIT: No, you didn't miss anything. How Barry survived will be explained at a later date. c:**


	18. Chapter 18

**An update on Christmas AND New Years? Pretty neat. Anyway, just popped in to wish everyone a good 2016! Hope you enjoy the new installment of POV!**

* * *

Dick had half a mind to go back to sleep when he awoke in Barbara's bed. Things were a lot less complicated in his dreams. But he had already spent who knew how long in a dream-like horror state, and he had no intention to stretch that out longer, so he was putting his feet down on the scratchy carpet before he was fully prepared to face the world.

Getting up was a bit nauseating, but overall, things were pretty clear mentally. It was the emotional part that he was having trouble digesting. His skin prickled and itched and his lungs stuttered something strange at the surreal knowledge that he was in one of his best friends' house. It struck him then that he had no idea how long he had been in the cell which only snippets of memories like straight out of a horror film described to him, and Dick tried to make it to the door to go downstairs and ask, but he found himself crumbling in the middle of the room on his way there. His legs were jelly, and his ribs hurt. It was hard to breathe. His head throbbed. His entire body was weak.

The air was warm, while he had been so used to cold, and he found the temptation to grab Barbara's blanket hard to resist because his body still felt like it was supposed to be cold. The carpet was rough but welcoming, and the sounds of the house were most comforting, filtering to his ears from the kitchen downstairs. Someone was laughing, probably Barbara, and the tension of his lungs eased a little at the sound.

It was more than surreal. It was unreal. But it was a good kind of unreal. He was tense, and he couldn't seem to relax, he felt like at any moment something would jump out to hurt him, but he fell asleep before he had properly awoken nonetheless.

Dick was being shook what felt like seconds later, and the smell of bacon drifted up to him from the carpet. He turned his head lazily to see a sizzling plate of bacon, eggs, toast, and orange juice sitting innocently beside his head. It was so stereotypical that he wanted to laugh.

Barbara was kneeling beside it. He stared at her, opening his mouth to say hello, but words still didn't seem able to come out. She looked sad and said nothing either, but she checked his forehead and helped him up just the same. She plucked a bottle of Ibuprofen from her dresser, too, but one look at Dick's horrified expression had her quickly dropping it into a drawer again and shutting it tight.

She stayed leaned up against her bed and not looking at him as he ate, however suffocating it made the atmosphere. He wolfed the food down too fast, feeling like a void had opened up at the bottom of his stomach, but the second that he had eaten only half, he felt like his skin was going to rip from being stretched so tightly over his body and he was puking into the toilet too soon afterwards.

While vomiting unattractively, Dick felt fingers brush his bangs and the hair at the sides of his face back. He hadn't had a haircut in a long time, and his locks were just long enough to swing in front of his mouth and eyes. When it seemed that he had finished, the toilet roll beside the toilet was slapped and Dick managed to rip a good length off. He wiped his mouth and the seat, dropped it into the toilet, flushed it, and put the lid down in embarrassment all without looking at his helper higher than her knees. Not even when she kneeled down beside him.

Cautiously, Barbara took the corner of Dick's shirt (it was much too big for him, probably her brother's, but he was just thankful that it wasn't anything from the asylum) and waved it, silently asking for permission to lift it up. Dick raised his arms in response, and Barbara uncovered just enough to see his stomach and the bottom of his lungs. There was a gasp of breath, and he was abruptly being gathered in an all-engulfing hug.

"I didn't- I didn't know-" she stuttered.

It seemed like a lot of people didn't know and were sorry about it. "Thanks," he said in response. Barbara backed away, holding his shoulders. She frowned.

"What?"

"For holding my hair, though I guess that was supposed to be the other way around." Since Dick had started to talk, he didn't really want to stop, because when he wasn't talking he was thinking. He definitely didn't want to think.

Barbara didn't seem to know what to do with Dick's sudden change in nature, so she rolled her eyes. Classic Babs. "You're welcome?"

"And thanks for trying to get me help, I guess, even if it almost got me killed. I'm going to be mad at you for a while, but I can't really think about it so I'm not mad at you right now. Though, I'm not going to thank you for calling me insane, even if it was kind of justified." He didn't remember much of what had gone down to get him in the asylum, but he did remember being called insane. He could sense that he was breathing too fast. He must have been on the verge of a panic attack, but it was all distant, as if it weren't really happening to him but only happening in a movie.

It made him feel like he was in a daze, but that was okay, because things were easier to do when he didn't think that they were actually real.

Barbara bit her lip, and Dick should have been prepared for when she started to cry. She hugged him again, quicker that time, before releasing him and poking him hard on the forehead, probably because she was too afraid of hurting him to do much else. "Where did you even learn how to do a backflip?" she sniffled.

"Wikipedia."

She gave him a look. It made Dick smile through his own tears, even if just a little.

* * *

Bruce Wayne was not a happy man, as a general rule.

Most people who blamed themselves for their parents' deaths enough to get dressed up in a bat costume every night to beat up petty thieves dressed as cats and less petty, usually sociopathic villains who dressed up as scarecrows or clowns normally weren't.

He had been unhappier than usual for the last few months, and that was pretty unhappy. Actually, professionals, along with Alfred, called it 'depressed'. Bruce was well aware of that fact.

Bruce hadn't known what to do when his ward's - to hell with it, his son's - best friend had died in an especially gruesome manner. And it wasn't to be thought that Bruce hadn't felt the loss at all, either. The kid had been barely sixteen and Bruce had been the one to tell him to do the job that had led to his death. Not only that, but apart from Dick, Wally had been the one on the team that Bruce knew most personally, considering the boy's close relationship with Dick. If Wally had known their identities and Bruce had been allowed to drop his Batman act in order to actually talk to Wally without the boy fearing for his life, they might have developed some sort of relationship.

In truth, Bruce had liked Wally.

When Wally had died, Dick had become the sort of person that reminded Bruce of himself. A little more lethargic, the death having motivated him to not caring about life rather than caring too much, but he had so closely resembled Bruce at that age that Bruce was at a loss. He had just been learning how to act like a father, or trying to, in the more traditional way for Dick. He didn't know how to act like a father for himself. That had been Alfred's job, and Bruce was certainly no Alfred. So Bruce had decided to leave it up to the butler, and he had been so uncertain about his own role and what his own role entitled that he had distanced himself completely.

Then, Dick had been happy again. Bruce had known that he should have been relieved at that, he knew that he should have rejoiced. But he had been in his line of business too long to just let it go at that. He had known that there was something more, and though he had been proven right, he had finally let go of the matter only right before the full truth had been revealed. A lie by omission was still a lie. The second that he had found something that he had deemed logical, he had let it rest at that. He had let that lie tell him not to listen to Dick, his partner, his family, whom he trusted nightly with his life without ever thinking about it, and he regretted that more than he had regretted anything in a long time.

It was his fault that Dick had nearly died.

Before that? It had been his fault that Dick had learned to hate him. Alfred had been right, as he had always been. Bruce had let his own habits come in the way of communication, he had gone back to being the lone wolf, and he had allowed Dick to misread every intention of his. Everything that he had done in order to try and protect Dick had been misinterpreted as trying to hurt Dick, until the point that all those interpretations weren't even Dick's doing. It was his medication's. Medication that Bruce had let get dished out all because he had refused the communication that was the only reason Dick had bonded with him in the first place, the communication that Bruce knew was so crucial but he still kept forgetting about.

Everything was all due to miscommunication, and that was all Bruce's fault.

So, Bruce may not have been good (or at all passable) at mending broken relationships, but he was damn good at something else.

"Why?"

His growl echoed in the small GCPD interrogation room as he stood imposingly in the doorway, the heavy door resonating shut behind him.

Harley's mouth hung open just the slightest bit. "Huh?"

Bruce was attempting to contain his frustrations when he yanked a projectile out of one of his many pouches and threw it at the sole camera's wires, moving a chair to jam the door. There was brief banging from outside and a shout or two, but it eventually fell quiet, and Bruce was satisfied that the one man he trusted in the police force happened to be a man of position.

He admitted that maybe he wasn't the best at reigning in his frustrations sometimes.

"Why did you put Dick Grayson in an insane asylum if you knew that was nothing was wrong with him?" He had to remain at least relatively patient. Harley didn't know that he had a personal connection with the boy. But considering that Joker was in no doubt somehow involved, Bruce had a hard time reminding himself of that.

Harley looked genuinely confused, but then smiled brightly as she seemed to understand something. "Oh, he's insane. Maybe he wasn't that insane when he came for treatment, but you gotta understand, he's seeing things that ain't there! No mind, if he wasn't insane b'fore, he's insane now."

Bruce wasn't going to strangle her. He wasn't. "You went to school for psychiatry. You knew that Dick didn't need the medication. I won't ask again. Why did you do it?"

Harley frowned. "You put Mister J in that place! It was unfair that I couldn't put somebody you love there, too. Now you know how it feels!" she crossed her arms and scowled at the table, plopping back into her seat.

What?

Bruce felt the anger drain completely out of him - or maybe it was just put somewhere else to draw upon later.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded slowly, stalking towards the table. Harley pouted. She seemed to be doing a lot of that. Bruce had to remind himself that she was a smart, full-grown woman who was a medical school graduate. It was hard to believe.

"Wally and all," she said with a dismissive wave of her wrist. "I was just watchin' TV, like any normal person onna Friday, and Mister J hadn't shown up in a long while, and then they was talkin' about Robin, your little birdy-boy, tryna stop some robbing but getting some girl killed, and they was talking all about Wally. 'Oh boy, yeah, little babe Jr. started crying and Robin asked if Jr. could see Wally, wowza. And Robin was yelling all over the place for Wally, Wally must be Batman, but nah, Wally ain't no Batman. There wasn't nobody there, just Robin and he kept talking about Wally, like he was some invisible man."

Bruce felt the blood freeze up in his veins. He hadn't even thought about Dick's psychiatrist when the news had gone up. He had just been relieved that Dick had been too embarrassed to talk about Wally at school, considering Barbara didn't seem to know a thing.

But the only person other than Bruce, Alfred, Barry, and Iris who knew that Dick had been seeing a dead boy named Wally was Dick's psychiatrist, Miss. Frances.

A.K.A. the Joker's girlfriend, Harleen Frances Quinzel.

When Bruce offered no response, shocked as he was and immensely grateful that his paranoia had him knock out the room's camera along with its microphone, Harley lifted her eyes to look at Bruce. "And so, y'know, you're probably Bruce Wayne or something, but when I went to Mister J to tell him the good news, lookie I've got Batman's name, he's like, 'What'd'ya mean? Batman's name is Batsy!' He wasn't gonna listen to me, didn't wanna know your name. You're as much a mask as he's a clown."

Harley had known that Batman and Robin were Bruce Wayne and Richard Grayson since almost the very beginning, and she had said nothing.

But court was next week. The date had been moved up due to Batman's sudden intervention and the materialisation of Dick, who was in need of urgent medical attention. The day before, S.W.A.T. had taken the asylum by storm, only to reveal illegal drugs and chemicals that were obtained without license, along with a history of malpractice and the confession that the workers assumed everything they did to their patients was by consent simply due to their patients' initial admittance into the facility, although it mentioned nothing of that sort in any of their license agreements or contracts. It was a small asylum, too, off the main roads of Gotham City and almost completely out of city limits, isolated and overlooked.

Harley's lawyer would be there soon, and 'why' was a common question. Harley had said nothing because she had never been prompted. No one had known that she was in possession of Gotham's biggest and most yearned for secret.

But she would be prompted in court. Bruce had days. Or maybe just minutes, with the way that the banging on the door had started up again.

He stepped forward faster than Harley had time to react and hauled her up by the front of her striped shirt. "You're not going to tell anyone about this. Not a word in court."

Harley stuck out her tongue. "What'r'ya gonna do? Kill me?"

Bruce's eyes narrowed. "No. I'll kill the Joker."

Harley rolled her eyes. "You don't kill!" she exclaimed, as if exasperated with the entire conversation already.

He had to think. Fast. What would Harley listen to? Well, the Joker, but-

Actually...

"I haven't killed the Joker because I didn't want to," he said lowly, like it was their own personal secret, drawing his face closer to the woman's and forcing a wry and somewhat crooked smile onto the corner of his lips. He hated it. "The game's been fun. But it's not so much fun anymore when I can't play it, because it won't be just me and him after this. He's right, you know. I'm not the Batman without the Joker."

Harley drew slightly further into herself with a contemplating, less convinced frown. "But, you don't kill...," she said warily.

Bruce's fist that was holding Harley up curled, but not in anger. It curled in pain, and his lips with their smile ached. "I killed my parents," he whispered. He dropped his smile at the same time that he dropped Harley. "And I liked them a lot more than I like the Joker."

He was about to remove the chair and sweep out the door, but there was one more question on his mind. Harley was sitting on the ground, trembling with the thought of what Bruce had implicated, and Bruce was standing in front of her, his heels facing her shaking knees as he turned his head to look at her over his left shoulder.

"Why was your apartment trashed, if you were working with the Joker and not against him?"

But Harley only drew further into herself, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking back and forth, and Bruce knew that he could do nothing about what that situation suggested. At least, not right then. He had more important priorities.

She was crazy. Joker was crazy. There was no cure for the insane.

And that was exactly what Bruce was worried about.

* * *

 **I'm a big fan of the theory that Joker has gotten close to finding out Batman's identity a good plenty of times, maybe he's even found it out, but he just has no interest in it. It's more fun when they're playing their parts. Outside of them, Batman is just a regular person, and there's nothing in it for the Joker there. The Joker is obsessed with the Batman - not Bruce Wayne.**

 **Also, if you haven't noticed, my versions of Harley Quinn and the Joker come from Batman: The Animated Series. That was my favourite portrayal of the Joker. I don't honestly believe that the Joker should be unnecessarily sadistic. In my mind, he's just crazy. He does what he want for his own amusement, he doesn't go out of his way to bring pain to people because that gets old pretty quick. He does what he think is funny, and if people die in the process, all the better.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: You may be wondering where I went. Or maybe you don't care and are about to stop reading. In any case, I'll grace my lovely readers with a response: The first week, I forgot. I literally forgot to update. I think I may have forgotten it was even Friday. And so the next Friday came and I realised I hadn't updated, but that's when finals kicked into full gear, as well as auditions (I auditioned for one show and got cast in two as two supporting roles - one as a gold-digging British cancan dancer who is kind of a whore, and the other as the manager of a 50's restaurant where I spend my entire stage time on roller skates). So long story short, I didn't update because I spent an entire week studying for my math final while simultaneously practicing my gold-digger voice.**

 **Make sure to read the bottom for updates on an upcoming new story, and I am again TERRIBLY sorry for the wait!**

* * *

Gotham General Hospital was an impressive place. Normally, Bruce wouldn't have been phased. But when worry gnawed at his gut, the hospital just seemed to grow bigger with it, eating away at his mind. The hallways that were in reality so simple felt to him like a labyrinth, twisting and winding and turning and swirling, though they were all rather straight and very grid-like.

Wally was probably with him. Bruce assumed that he was worried, too. The man was temporarily jealous of the ability to go through walls. If Wally was in the hospital, he was probably already with Dick.

Bruce had been so anxious that he had yet to even check up on Barry. Throughout the incident with the Joker, the lasers that hadn't cut Barry in half had been actual lasers, but they had only been lights. They had only been cat toys. So Barry was very possibly traumatised and still recovering from the mindset of nearly having met his end, but Bruce was starting to half convince himself that his son already had. His son not by biology and only by mutual loneliness, but his son nonetheless.

According to Jim, Dick had woken up last week ill and feverish. Jim had immediately checked Dick into Gotham General that afternoon, though it was honestly the first thing that he should have done. Yet, Bruce couldn't blame him for any of his actions. After receiving a friend, a child no less, when they've gone through such a traumatic event due to the abuse of the system, who wouldn't want to keep them as close as possible? If Bruce was completely truthful, had Dick been under his care, he would have taken him straight to Leslie. He didn't want Dick alone in another white washed room if he could help it, and at least he would have been able to stay by his side in the clinic. With Dick at Gotham General, Bruce hadn't even been allowed access into the room for the entire week.

It felt like everyone was staring.

They probably were.

A woman suddenly materialised in front of Bruce. He couldn't understand where she had come from, and that was a frightening thought, but she seemed to pose no immediate threat and at least he wasn't in the suit.

Well, he was pretty sure he wasn't in the suit. He had to glance down at his hands to check. With how off his game Bruce was that day, he wouldn't have been surprised if he had forgotten to switch personas.

"Right this way," she said, not even bothering to address Bruce by his name. He hardly noticed, only followed willingly like a lost puppy (and how sickening a thought that was) as she expertly maneouvered the endless squeaky halls.

A baby stopped crying and stared as they walked past, very much in awe.

They had just turned into an adjacent hallway when a door at the end of it abruptly burst open, and tripping through the doorway was a boy clad in a drab hospital gown. The image of the boy in such a mundane gown, stripped of all the gadgets and clothes and trinkets that added to his personality, was shocking and off, but Bruce had no time to marvel as the boy regained his balance from his stumble, the nurse a few feet from him letting out a sharp cry in alarm, and turned his head just enough in order to spot Bruce. The boy barrelled past the nurse and the next thing Bruce knew, he had an arm-full of grief stricken and mentally damaged teenage boy.

"I'm sorry, too," Dick whispered. Bruce hugged him tighter.

He had lost hope in Dick. He had lost hope, he had given up, and he had succumbed to the mundane acceptance that nothing was in his power. He had given up on Dick, and he was looking at the cost.

And then, what Bruce thought was the final straw to officially break his heart, Dick met his eyes through the rearview mirror five minutes later from the backseat of the Wayne Bentley. Bruce was driving that time. Many strings had to have been pulled to get Dick released so early, and it was only for the day because he had a check-up in the morning, but Bruce intended to take full advantage of the time that he had to make Dick feel welcome again at home. Dick was deathly pale, and at every turn of the car (Bruce tried to drive as softly as possible because of it) he squeezed his eyes shut and clutched his seatbelt as if he were going to hurl at any moment. With his sunken eyes and scrunched up body, his clothes hanging too big on his body from all of his lost muscle mass, Bruce was reminded of the nine year old boy that he had picked up from the circus five years prior. And Dick opened his mouth only to ask: "Are you real?"

Bruce swallowed past the lump in his throat and responded: "Yes. And so is Wally."

Dick seemed to have no energy to start crying. He just kind of choked, or maybe it was a hiccup, or maybe a chuckle, his eyes watering, and turned his head to look out the window. Still staring at the street, he waved.

* * *

The courtroom echoed disturbingly. Everything was clean and polished to every corner and sharp edge, and Bruce felt that if he shuffled just a little, the rustle of his clothes would bounce off of every wall and into the ears of every person. As someone who preferred to remain hidden, it chilled him to the bone, at the same time that he felt fire ignite beneath his heart. He was so angry it hurt.

Two weeks had passed, and Bruce had Dick finally checked out of the frequent hospital stays. He had managed to convince Dick to stay at home that day, though it wasn't as much of a difficult task as he had been expecting (or hoping). Talking to Dick was awkward again, just as it had been so many years ago (that time when every step that Bruce had taken had screamed _wrong, wrong, wrong,_ because he himself had felt like he had still been a teenager with a much older mind - it was ludicrous to try and raise someone his own age). He had stuttered to Dick that he was going to court and Dick had asked no questions. Bruce had left him staring blankly at the fireplace.

Bruce despised that blank, haunted look, and the reason for it was sitting right before him.

Harleen Frances Quinzel was not draped in chains, much to Bruce's disgust. She was only handcuffed, sitting behind a great wooden desk in a great wooden chair with an oversized striped uniform and a makeup-less face that made her look remarkably frail. He wanted more than that. He wanted her to suffer. He wanted her wrapped up in a stiff white jacket and locked alone in a white walled room, forced meds after meds of poison that she didn't need nor want. He wanted her screaming for mercy. He wanted no one to give it to her.

Distantly, Bruce was a bit frightened by his own thoughts. Presently, he most honestly couldn't care less. He was only there for one reason, and he didn't even know if he could stick the trial through for that. Just looking at her made bile rise up in his throat and his belly hurt. Unfortunately, he really couldn't leave, considering the fact that he was the prosecutor.

"Miss. Quinzel, I've been told that the patients were perfectly normal before being admitted to the asylum. Is this true?" Bruce's lawyer asked, pacing in front.

"I'dun know. I'm not in charge," Harley frowned.

"Was Mr. Grayson healthy before you admitted _him_ specifically, then?"

"No."

"What was wrong with him?"

"He was hallucinating," said Harley, in an exasperated tone that showed she had repeated that line hundreds of times.

"I have here that you had already been medicating Mr. Grayson at the time of his admission. Is this true?"

"Yeah."

"Can this medication cause hallucinations?"

No answer.

"Was this medication called Clozapine?"

"Yup."

"And can you tell us what this medication does?"

"It deludes the symptoms of schizophrenia."

"What are its side effects?"

"A lot of things."

"Like?"

Harley again gave no answer.

"Miss. Quinzel, what happens if a non-schizophrenic, underaged, unqualified teenager takes Clozapine?"

After a lengthy pause, Harley finally said: "They can get sick."

"What are some ways in which they can get sick?"

"Fevers," she said brokenly. "Dizziness. Headaches."

"All of which Mr. Wayne and the family butler, Mr. Pennyworth, claim Mr. Grayson was ailing from. It was also reported that Mr. Grayson was starting to exhibit symptoms of extreme paranoia. In fact, symptoms similar to paranoid schizophrenia, which includes believing everyone is going to kill him, believing he's being watched, believing in conspiracies, believing he's being poisoned, and social withdrawal. Are these not symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia?" the lawyer pressed.

"...They are."

"And is it possible that by abusing Clozapine, the medication didn't only _not_ cure Mr. Grayson of hallucinations, but it _created_ these hallucinations?"

"Clozapine can cause hallucinations if misused, but it wasn't being misused!" Harley insisted frantically, going so far as to try and stand up. A guard pushed her back down. "That's why I tried to help him with the medicine! To cure his hallucinations!"

"In his statement, Bruce Wayne claims that Mr. Grayson was admitted into your care for symptoms of depression due to the passing of his best friend, Wallace West, _not_ for hallucinations. Is this true?"

"I-" Harley's lips opened like a fish for a second before she went on. "Yeah, but-but he started hallucinating later! He started thinkin' Wally was still 'round!"

"So you're saying that Mr. Grayson did _not_ only start hallucinating _after_ being medicated, but he was hallucinating _before_ being medicated?"

"Yeah!"

"And what, Miss. Quinzel, do you say is your _proof_?"

Finally, there came the moment that he had been waiting for, amidst the back and forth babble that only stressed him further. Jim sat in the front row, leaning forward heavily in anticipation. The man couldn't have possibly known what Bruce was waiting for, but he was still most likely eager for the verdict to be announced. The sooner his conscience could be relieved, the better. Bruce knew the feeling. They both blamed themselves.

"Miss. Quinzel, why did you do it?" Bruce's attorney asked, a minute later. Harley was twiddling her thumbs. Bruce was enraged. "Miss. Quinzel?"

It was the turning moment. Harley looked up, and Bruce didn't quite know the expression on his face, but the woman wouldn't look straight at it.

Silence reigned in the courtroom. Jim coughed. Bruce's chest constricted with hatred.

Twiddle, fiddle, fumble. Harley twirled her hair awkwardly.

"All these rich people," she mumbled. "Ain't fair, 's all. Gotham belongs to the people who deserve it, who work for it. Not for the rich kids born to it." She looked pointedly at Bruce, analysing his reaction.

He kept it stone cold.

The trial ended quickly after that, with the bang of a gavel stricken by a judge wearing a repulsed face. Bruce couldn't decide which was worse; the fact that the insane asylum housed and tortured teenagers for lack of a clear reason, or that all of the teenagers wound up dead afterward. Harley was hustled out meanly by a pair of burly guards with two life sentences in Arkham Asylum over her head. She tried to lock eyes with Bruce, but the guard to her left wouldn't let her. He blocked her way, and Bruce was grateful to miss out on the chance to see her for another second. Still, Bruce felt frustratingly unsatisfied when she disappeared behind closed doors.

It didn't feel like justice had been served at all.

He moved sluggishly, robotically, his movements an act of the subconscious mind, until Jim intercepted him at the door. The Commissioner said nothing, or at least nothing that could pierce the heavy veil clouding Bruce's thoughts. Instead, he simply walked with Bruce, down the path with the irritatingly bright blossom trees that blew their pedals across the sidewalk, hands tucked into his pockets. Bruce didn't think he'd ever seen Jim contemplating something without his hands in his pockets. When they eventually reached Bruce's car, Alfred right on time as usual, Jim laid a firm hand on his shoulder.

"You did everything you could."

Bruce wished that were true.

* * *

 **A/N: In case you guys missed it in the court excerpt, basically what Bruce's lawyer was trying to do was convince the judge that Clozapine was the cause of Dick believing that Wally was still around, not only of his later paranoia. Supporting evidence includes the fact that Dick hadn't started hallucinating Wally until being put under Miss. Frances' care. This makes it (in the eyes of the legal system) seem as though Dick were completely sane before being put into psychiatry, and that Harley had deliberately caused him to go insane (which is true, but it wasn't exactly brought about by that timeline of events. In reality, Harley only found out that Dick was Robin after Dick was under her care, when that catastrophe at the bank occurred and witness reports mentioned Wally. At the beginning, she had treated him fairly).**

 **OTHER NEWS: I recently started wondering about the whole...fantasy side of fanfiction. I had never really gone into it before. So naturally, I start thinking, and I go search up some merpeople fanfiction. Unfortunately, in the case of using keywords, I found exactly 11 fanfictions on the world wide web having to do with the Batman fandom involving merpeople and which was over at least 1,000 words, and I found exactly ONE I actually liked. I'm not very much into fantasy, so I love the idea of trying to incorporate myths with scientific facts, but what I love more is when characters stay at least mostly in character, which I've found is horribly difficult with the fantasy genre. Therefore, I decided that since I can't for the life of me find a story I want to read, I should write it. And I've started to. It hasn't turned out completely to my liking, though I still like it quite a bit, and I didn't incorporate total scientific reality (so yes, they have noses, and ears, and hair... My inner biologist shudders), but I've made it a challenge to write for every genre on this site, so fantasy it is. I'll start posting it when I've finished, as I'm only 100 pages done (POV is about 280, though it won't be as long as this) but I just wanted to give a heads up that that's happening. The main characters will be Jason Todd (I've never written him before! I'm syked!) and Dick Grayson, with supporting characters Wally West and Roy Harper and possibly Artemis Crock. It isn't slash (there's zero romance, period), but has lots of bromance so if you're super into Dick/Jason, you can imagine all the pre-slash you want. There are also homemade bombs involved. I'm so excited to post it.**

 **Thanks a bunch for sticking around! You guys rock!**


	20. Chapter 20

**This two week gap between updates seems to becoming a pattern now. I'm only going to warn that my next update will also take a little more than two weeks due to school and theatre (and having procrastinated for a convention, meaning I've got to make my Beast Boy cosplay in a week) and all that fun stuff.**

 **Speaking of fun stuff, here's a cute chapter to heal you all from the heartbreak. c: Though please keep in mind that Dick is still registering the events that he's gone through (which, keep in mind, he doesn't even know why they happened). If his reactions to hearing certain news seems off, he's just in shock.**

* * *

Bruce had left an hour earlier, and that made Wally unbelievably angry. Bruce and Dick had been separated for longer than Wally knew (he gave up on counting the days when the only thing distinguishing one day from the next was when the sky grew dark, and that wasn't very helpful when he was inside), and Bruce still had the audacity to leave Dick alone?

That Bat had better be glad Wally wasn't solid enough to punch him. Though, the memory of being in Alfred's body rose unbidden to the forefront of Wally's mind, and he shook it off as best he could.

Wally didn't know where Bruce had gone, but he didn't care all that much. What he cared about was how forlorn Dick's hunched figure looked, gazing unblinkingly at the ceiling (that was the only real movement he'd made for hours - the transition from staring at the fireplace to staring at the ceiling). When he'd had enough of staring at Dick staring at the ceiling staring back at Dick, Wally quickly went to his room in Central City and grabbed his sweater (sweet Iris had the sweater once more folded neatly on his bed), and brought it back to the manor with him. Standing in the main hall, he had to stare hard at the floppy fabric hanging between his hands before he was hit with another brilliant idea.

The former speedster walked into the kitchen, where Alfred was slowly beginning to set out vegetables in preparation for dinner, and plopped the sweater unceremoniously onto the cutting board. When Alfred turned back around with an armful of potatoes, he frowned.

"That is rather unsanitary, Master Wallace," he said smoothly, rolling the potatoes onto a different cutting board before considering the arrangement of the sweater. It was stretched out into an H. "I'll say, your handwriting in sweaters is far better than your handwriting in pen."

Wally laughed (he was also slightly offended, but considering he could no longer hold a pen, he didn't really care) before shifting the shape of the sweater into an O. Alfred watched and said the letters out loud as Wally spelled out T, then C, O, C, and O.

Alfred went back to cutting potatoes. "I hope you don't intend on drinking hot chocolate, because I must inform you, that might be just the slightest bit challenging."

Wally didn't say anything, and Alfred seemed to go back to slicing in silence before he stilled and took a soft breath. He said nothing to Wally. Instead, he took a rag in his hands as if he were drying them off, but there was nothing to dry so it struck Wally as more of a nervous habit, and walked slowly to the end of the room in order to peer around the wall into the living space. Dick was, of course, still there.

Alfred went back into the kitchen and put a pot on the stove. It was the strangest way Wally had ever seen hot chocolate being made, and the ingredients seemed simple enough, though Wally still lost track. He was reading the label on a container of heavy cream when Alfred finished pouring chocolate chips into the pot and, soon after, the pot into two mugs. He carefully placed them on a tray and elegantly carried them into the next room.

As Wally watched, Alfred delicately placed a mug in front of Dick. It was one that struck Wally as out-of-place, with a thick edge and cliche smiling snowmen with snowflakes covering it. Still, he felt that it was appropriate for what Dick stood for.

Or, what he used to stand for amidst the dreary darkness of his depressing surroundings. Wally hated the thought that instead of standing out, Dick would eventually just mesh into it, melt into the shadows as if he and the shadows were one and the same. They were not one in the same. They were not supposed to be one and the same.

Alfred sat down delicately beside Dick's feet, where they were stretched out across the couch. "Master Dick, I made you hot chocolate."

Dick didn't answer, remaining to stare unblinkingly at the ceiling. He looked robotic. He looked like he wasn't even there.

"Master Dick?" Alfred asked softly after a few minutes, laying the palm of his hand on one of Dick's shins. "Dick," he finally said, "please."

Dick blinked and opened his mouth. He stayed like that for a few more moments, until he suddenly took a deep breath, possibly the first more dramatic movement he'd made in hours, and said, "No thanks." His voice was breathy, as if he couldn't muster up the energy to project it more than a few centimeters in front of his mouth, as if simply shifting the air around his teeth was accomplishment enough.

Wally expected Alfred to try and persuade Dick to drink his hot chocolate, or even force him because as far as Wally knew it was Alfred who was in charge, but Alfred acknowledged the atmosphere too much for that. Instead, he softly stood up, the cushion of the couch barely bouncing, bent down beside Dick and stroked his hair away from his face. He gently began to move Dick's head, and then his neck, and then his torso until Dick was gradually being raised into a sitting position. Alfred placed two pillows behind his back and set one of the mugs in Dick's hands.

Dick stared at it with zero motivation to drink.

"Hey, buddy, you can do this," Wally whispered, and he wanted to slap himself for opening his big mouth. The air felt so fragile, so sad, and Wally had shattered it like breakable glass. Granted, Wally wasn't one for fragile or sad things, but he had to admit that he needed to learn how to read situations better.

A bitter corner of his mind muttered that he didn't need to change anything at all, it wouldn't matter because he was already dead.

"All you gotta do is move a bit. Start with your eyes. Blink them, even if it takes a million years. You just gotta blink," he continued. Though he wasn't the most tactful person in the world, Wally felt a part of his own past get cleared of dust as he looked at the condition his best friend was in, as if he were staring back at himself.

Depression wasn't something that could be fixed easily, if at all.

He remembered only a bone deep exhaustion when he recalled living with his father. And only towards the end, and then more prominent when he first moved in with Barry.

Most people believed that being in a horrible situation was when someone is suddenly hit with a dragging depression, as if it were a sudden thing, as if it occurred during the hardship itself. Rarely it did. The mind was too occupied with _surviving_ to think about _living._ It was only after the entire incident was over, it was only once everything was better, once the painful need for survival was overcome, did the mind seem to give up on itself. It was only after things seemed to be looking up that the mental state just wanted to look down, because nothing actually felt better, and then the person suffering in silence would just want to lay there forever and do nothing because what was the point? Even if they could conjure up a million reasons as to why there was a point to getting up in the morning, there would always be the question, the oblivious question that held no regard to what it could be answered with because it would always be there, eating away at their energy. It was a heavy virus, chipping away at the inside of their bones and living there, magnetting them to wherever they happened to be. It pushed down at their lungs and sat on their chest until they couldn't breathe. It clung to their mind, as if it were hanging off of a cliff and their mind was the hook but the hook wasn't sturdy and it was slowly giving way to that immense pressure.

Wally could see that Dick's eyes were glossy, and he probably couldn't be bothered to blink them back into focus.

It took time. It took a lot of time and Wally was about to try again when Dick blinked. "Try again," Wally encouraged, because that first time didn't seem to give the effect that he had wanted. Dick blinked again. And then it was a rapid one or two more times after that as his vision swam back into focus and he just stared sadly at Wally. But it was better than no emotion at all.

Dick took a deep breath, looked at Alfred, then back at Wally. Then, he began to cry. They were hiccuping, weak sobs and they didn't stop so Alfred slowly removed the mug from Dick's hands and drew Dick closer to himself, tucking him beneath his chin. Wally was the only one to look up when he heard the tap of polished shoes against the polished floor and was faced with the sight of a stoic Bruce Wayne in the doorway, mouth set in a thin line. He wanted very much to throw a tantrum and yell at the man, but knew that would do no good for Dick. Wally calmed down some as Bruce set his coat against the adjacent loveseat and sat on the arm of the couch where Dick and Alfred were sitting. It took a few moments, but Alfred gently removed himself from Dick, whose sobs were starting to ebb away some, in order for Bruce to cautiously move into his place.

It seemed that Dick didn't care who was sitting there. He leaned his head against Bruce's shoulder almost immediately. Thirty minutes later, Dick was fast asleep and the hot chocolate had gone cold. Wally watched as Bruce swept Dick into his arms and walked up the many stair steps of the manor. The man was about to habitually head for Dick's room, but changed his mind last minute, and instead walked down the hall to another room. When Wally followed him into that room, Wally could only reason that it must have been Bruce's. Bruce carefully placed Dick underneath the covers, with some hesitation kissed him on the forehead, and left. It had been the only time that Wally had ever seen Bruce (or Batman) express affection.

It took three hours for Dick to wake up again, and Wally only knew that because he had been sitting attentive vigil right beside him. Dick didn't seem to have any more energy than before but instead of staring apathetically at the ceiling, he seemed surprised at his surroundings. His eyes landed on Wally.

"Hey," Wally said with a small smile.

Dick didn't say anything for a moment, then, "I haven't slept in here since I was nine."

"Why'd you sleep here when you were nine?"

Dick gave a puff of air through his nose that might have been meant as a chuckle of some sort. "I was afraid of the dark."

"So you decided comfort was in sleeping beside the personification of darkness? Ironic."

Dick smiled. It was a sad, nostalgic smile, but Wally loved it nonetheless. "I didn't know he was Batman at the time. I had only just moved in."

Wally didn't think it would be a good idea to continue that trip down memory lane, so he changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit." Wally waited for him to elaborate. He didn't. "How long has it been since I moved back here?"

"About two weeks."

Dick's eyebrows furrowed. "Doesn't feel it."

"Longer or shorter?"

"Like a 336 hour day."

Wally narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Did you just calculate how many hours there are in two weeks in your head?"

"Yeah?"

"I can't even remember my name when I first wake up," Wally remarked incredulously.

"Well, I wouldn't want to remember a name like Wallace either."

Wally gave a startled bark of laughter. "You're one to talk. You had to be named Dick so you would remember you had one."

Dick's eyes widened in surprise and a smile touched his lips at the unexpectedly jest.

Wally knew that they had a lot to talk about. They hadn't exactly been the best communicators during...well, everything that had happened. But he also knew that the meat of it could wait for later, when the both of them had taken their own mental health breaks. Mainly Dick. When silence began to lapse again, more comfortable than before, Wally interrupted it with, "I'm so sorry I didn't find you earlier."

"I'm sorry, too...for everything else," Dick said vaguely, in a way that made Wally feel as if Dick could read right into Wally's soul and find all the reasons why everything went wrong. Honestly, no words were needed, and Wally found that calming. They had no expectations from one another. What was done was done, and they had made it out mostly intact, which was the only thing that mattered in the end. "How did you all find me, anyway?"

"No one knew how...bad things were. And no one could really do anything about it either. Apparently Gotham doesn't care much for parental consent, it's only up to the psychiatrist whether or not you get put into a...facility. Anyway, uh, I found out where you got taken and I popped in and saw all that...and then told Barry and Bruce and we went sorta ninja-like and busted you out," he briefed.

"Wait, you _told_ Barry and Bruce?" Dick said skeptically.

Wally suddenly grinned in excitement. "Yeah! I can pick up a few objects that I used to own, like birthday pencils or school projects or that Resident Evil game you got me or that ugly sweater Iris made me. I arranged all of it on the floor and gave them the message that you were in trouble."

Dick smiled to match Wally's excitement. "Thank you," he said softly.

"Dude, being your knight in shining armour is part of the bro code."

Dick nodded. His smile faded a little. "What about Miss. Frances?" He sounded betrayed. "Why...why did she put me in there?"

"Uh…," Wally really didn't know how to go about telling Dick the truth. "She's...kind of dating the Joker? So she's crazy. That's basically why."

The acrobat stared at him. "That's…" he began, "not very surprising, actually."

Wally couldn't help it. He laughed. The conversation was completely absurd. He decided that he might as well get everything out into the open all at once. The topic was already crazy, what was a little more? "I also accidentally possessed your butler's body."

Wally wished he had a camera to take a picture of Dick's face.


End file.
